T-MOSAiC Scope
Land, Ice & People
T-MOSAiC is an IASC pan-Arctic, land-based program that extends the activities of the program MOSAiC: ‘The Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate’, MOSAiC is a multinational year-round study (2019-2020) of the central Arctic Ocean to measure the coupling between atmosphere, sea ice, ocean and ecosystem processes.
The objective of the satellite program T-MOSAiC is to coordinate complementary activities that will both aid and benefit from MOSAiC (especially the modelling components) by extending the work to the lands surrounding the Arctic Ocean and to the northern communities who live on those lands.
T-MOSAiC is relevant to the terrestrial sciences such as “estimating past changes in Arctic geodiversity and biodiversity, measuring current change and predicting future changes “. It is relevant to the cryosphere sciences because it includes measuring and modelling permafrost, snow and glacier mass balance across different scales, and projecting the ″future state of the Arctic cryosphere “. It is highly relevant to Social and Human sciences, especially “Arctic residents and change” because of the effect of changing climate on snow and permafrost that affect ecosystem services such as drinking water and country foods, and geosystem services such as the permafrost foundation that underpins buildings, pipelines and transport infrastructure.
The objective of the satellite program T-MOSAiC is to coordinate complementary activities that will both aid and benefit from MOSAiC (especially the modelling components) by extending the work to the lands surrounding the Arctic Ocean and to the northern communities who live on those lands.
T-MOSAiC is relevant to the terrestrial sciences such as “estimating past changes in Arctic geodiversity and biodiversity, measuring current change and predicting future changes “. It is relevant to the cryosphere sciences because it includes measuring and modelling permafrost, snow and glacier mass balance across different scales, and projecting the ″future state of the Arctic cryosphere “. It is highly relevant to Social and Human sciences, especially “Arctic residents and change” because of the effect of changing climate on snow and permafrost that affect ecosystem services such as drinking water and country foods, and geosystem services such as the permafrost foundation that underpins buildings, pipelines and transport infrastructure.
Potential implementation activities will include:
- Land-based stations in the circumpolar Arctic have a long history of ongoing environmental measurements, include climate, cryosphere and ecological variables, and these records before, during and after MOSAiC will help place the Arctic Ocean/atmosphere observations in a longer term, pan-Arctic context for modelling and interpretation. There is therefore a need to identify relevant environmental monitoring data archives, programs and projects; e.g., GTN-P; GTN-G; Nordicana; Sentinel North; Pangaea; Polar Data Catalogue; SAON; GCW; the EU projects INTERACT, Nunataryuk, and ESA GlobPermafrost; the US programs NASA ABoVE, NSF NEON and NSF LTER).
- The observation network ‘International Arctic Systems for Observing the Atmosphere’ (IASOA) is already coordinating atmospheric measurements of direct relevance to MOSAiC and will be a key element of T-MOSAiC.
- Development of conceptual models relating the vulnerability of northern infrastructure and ecosystems to sea-ice and climate change, building on the progress in RATIC to date (IASC SHWG, TWG & CWG). RATIC is now incorporated within T-MOSAiC as the ‘northern infrastructure’ section of the program, with three components: remote communities, urban communities (cities) and industrial development, including pipeline, transport and port facilities.
- Measurements of relevant land-based state and process variables during the MOSAiC activity period should be identified, including biological data (e.g. via ITEX, Herbivory Network, Terrestrial Wildlife networks, NASA ABoVE, NEON, and LTER).
- MOSAiC is based on a drifting transect analysis of the Arctic Ocean, and transect analyses are underway in the terrestrial environment that could provide land-based equivalents; e.g., from the coast to continental interior, from high to lower latitudes (such as Gradient North Canada), and across East-West gradients (e.g. the Siberian Transect), to better understand the terrestrial extent of impacts caused by changes in the Arctic Ocean.
- Formulation of synthesis papers that consider the implications of Arctic sea ice change for land-based systems (including northern communities, cities, infrastructure, wildlife), and the reciprocal effects of changing landscapes, the terrestrial cryosphere and human activities on the Arctic Ocean.
- MOSAiC comes at a time of critical decision-making for global climate policies; T-MOSAiC may offer additional opportunities for public engagement and outreach.
