The Arctic Gateway

AMATII evaluates infrastructure ports, airports, and response capability by inventorying maritime and aviation assets in the Arctic. AMATII is co-led by the United States and Iceland, under the guidance of the Arctic Council's Sustainable Development Working Group

Principal Investigator: Institute of the North, Anchorage, Alaska, USA.

The Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost (GTN-P) is the primary international programme on monitoring permafrost parameters. GTN‐P was developed in the 1990s by the International Permafrost Association (IPA) under the Global Climate observing System (GCOS) and the Global Terrestrial Observing Network (GTOS), with the longterm goal of obtaining a comprehensive view of the spatial structure, trends and variability of changes in the active layer thickness and permafrost temperature.

SAON facilitates partnerships and synergies among existing observing and data network. The need for a well-coordinated and sustained Arctic Observing Network that meets scientific and societal needs has been identified in numerous high profile reports (e.g. Toward an Integrated Arctic Observing Network (NRC)) and at a variety of workshops and conferences. In November 2006, at the Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting in Salekhard, Russian Federation, Ministers welcomed the International Polar Year (IPY), 2007 –2008, as a unique opportunity to stimulate cooperation and coordination of Arctic research and increase awareness of the importance of the Arctic region.

The purpose of the ADC is to promote and facilitate international collaboration towards the goal of free, ethically open, sustained and timely access to Arctic data through useful, usable, and interoperable systems. ADC, among other things, contributes to the understanding of the nature and structure of the Arctic data system in the context of the global data system.

A compilation of existing in situ mass-balance observations on Arctic glaciers. The IASC Network on Arctic Glaciology, formed out of the Working Group on Arctic Glaciology, aims to address these rapid changes in arctic ice masses by initiating scientific programs and facilitating international cooperation between glaciologists and climate modelers in order to develop the understanding of arctic land ice and its role in global climatic and environmental change.

NSIDC manages and distributes scientific data on snow, ice, glaciers, frozen ground, and climate interactions. The National Snow and Ice Data Center encompasses several data centers, data management programs, and data projects. Specialized data managers lead these programs and projects, and provide shared services and infrastructure to all constituents of NSIDC.

The Arctic Coastal Dynamics (ACD) program is a multi-disciplinary, multi-national forum to exchange ideas and information. The overall objective of ACD is to improve our understanding of circum-Arctic coastal dynamics as a function of environmental forcing, coastal geology and cryology and morphodynamic behavior.

The Arctic System and its hydrology play a central role in regulatfing Earth´s climate and the impacts of a warming Arctic are already raising serious concerns about the stability of the sensitive balance between climate conditions, freshwater input, oceanic circulation and the state of cryospheric components.

Is a comprehensive database on Permafrost. Permafrost is defined as ground that remains continuously at or below 0°C or at least two consecutive years; some 24% of the land surface in the northern Hemisphere is classified as permafrost. In the Northern high latitudes, strong warming has been observed over the recent decades, and climate models project strong future warming. A projected decline in the extent of permafrost will have a major impact on the Earth system, affecting global climate through the mobilization of carbon and nitrogen stored in permafrost.

Advancing the predictive power of Earth system models through understanding of the structure and function of Arctic terrestrial ecosystems. The goal of NGEE Arctic is to support the DOE’s Biological and Environmental Research (BER) mission to advance a robust predictive understanding of Earth’s climate and environmental systems by delivering a process-rich ecosystem model, extending from bedrock to the top of the vegetative canopy and atmospheric interface, in which the evolution of Arctic ecosystems in a changing climate can be modeled at the scale of a high-resolution ESM grid cell.

The primary objective of APS is to publish achievements in fundamental research, applied research and high-technology research focused or based on the polar regions, and to report the latest discoveries, inventions, theories and methodologies in polar research. The scope of the journal covers a range of polar disciplines including glaciology, oceanography, atmospheric science, space physics, geology, geophysics, geochemistry, biology and ecology, medicine, Antarctic astronomy, environmental science and engineering and technology as well as polar social science, information service and management. APS also publishes occasional "Special Issues" on specific polar research themes.