Announcing a Town Hall Meeting at AGU
"The North Pole Environmental Observatory: Opportunities for Research"
Date: Thursday, 16 December 2004
Location: Moscone West Convention Center Room 3001
Time: 7:15 p.m.
The town hall announcement is available on the AGU web site at:
http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm04/index.php?town_hall=town_hall_o.htm&
pageRequest=events#thm
The meeting will present the ways investigators can take advantage of
the North Pole Environmental Observatory (NPEO) to do research in the
central Arctic Ocean. The North Pole region is sensitive to a changing
Arctic climate. For example, observations in the area have indicated
changes in ocean circulation, Atlantic water temperature, and ice
thickness. Being far from land, the North Pole region sees atmosphere,
ice, ocean, and ecosystem conditions and the interaction of these realms
that are representative of a large area of the central marine Arctic.
NPEO was established in 2000 to track change in the central Arctic
Basin. It is a distributed observatory consisting of three parts: an
automated drifting station installed near the Pole that drifts across
the Amundsen and Nansen basins, a deep ocean mooring near the Pole, and
repeated airborne hydrographic surveys that track changes along key
sections. NPEO is intended to enhance research opportunities to a broad
range of investigators by providing a platform for field activity and by
disseminating its long-term observations widely. At the meeting we will
describe these opportunities and seek input from the community on how
our operations might be modified to help a wider range of investigators.
Note that this meeting immediately follows the town hall meeting on "The
Future of NSF-funded Arctic Natural Science." The timing is fortunate
because the North Pole Environmental Observatory provides advantages of
scale to the type of individual-investigator exploratory research often
funded by Arctic Natural Sciences.
For further information, please contact:
Jamie Morison, Principal Oceanographer
Polar Science Center, APL-UW
1013 NE 40th Street
Seattle, WA 98105
Phone: 206-543-1394
E-mail: morison [at] apl.washington.edu