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Long-Term Plan for Arctic Environmental Research JCAR

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Long-Term Plan for Arctic Environmental Research JCAR Long-term Plan for Arctic Environmental Research Japan Consortium for Arctic Environmental Research April 2015 Preface The JCAR was founded in May of 2011 and has as many as 384 supporting members as of August 2014. Behind the birth of the JCAR was the idea of persons involved in Arctic research to develop previous efforts for Japanese research in the Arctic in a new form. Up to now, many Japanese researchers have visited Arctic. However, although their individual research abilities are high, results from Japan are often not well remarked in the international movements. As these researchers travel to the Arctic as a small group and short timealone, they recognize that continuity from past observations, knowledge of the trends of other researchers, cooperation frameworks, and arrangement are the weak points of Japanese research. For activities like these, the research is inevitably temporary, and the vision or realization of long-term observations becomes impossible. The founding of JCAR is expected to improve the exchange information on activities conducted by every researcher, to have future directions, and to obtain partners for potential cooperative research. The importance of establishing a long-term vision of Japanese Arctic environmental research within that kind of activity was considered and recommended in a midterm report (August, 2010) after discussion at the 2010 meeting of the Arctic Research Working Group of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. In the fall of 2011, the same year that JCAR was founded, the GRENE Arctic Climate Change Research Project started. In the following year, 2012, the minimum sea ice extent of the Arctic Ocean in the summer was recorded. The surface area of snow fall in spring was also a record low, and it was observed that extent of the melt of Greenland ice sheets expanded to almost the entire ice sheet surface. In March 2013, Japan's “Basic Plan on Ocean Policy” was renewed and attention also focused on the Arctic. In addition, Japanese Master Plan of Large Research Projects regarding the Arctic were submitted to the ScienceCouncil of Japan. In May 2013, Japan's participation in the Arctic Council as an observer country was recognized. The activities of the Arctic Council extend through many fields including international relations, environmental issues, and regional administration, but the base of decisions and those activities comes from information obtained through scientific activities. Regarding the quickly changing Arctic environment and research involving it, chances are increasing to prepare domestic research activities and appeals for international cooperation. It is important to understand the domestic situation in order to answer these problems. The long-term plan began moving from consideration to implementation in 2013, under the firm commitment of JCAR's first-term representative, Tetsuo Ohata. The activities of the working group (WG), which was organized to carry out the implementation, undertook the editing work and how to proceed with the work. Along with three general workshops, discussion sessions were held in consideration of each field and research foundations shared among fields. In the beginning, there was a concern about inconveniences, such as the length of time needed to write up the long-term plan, or research ideas being made public. However, over 140 people cooperated with writing up the “Long-term Plan for Arctic Environmental Research.” Activities for creating this plan progressed with support from the JCAR office and through discussion with many researchers involved with the Arctic, from Motoyoshi Ikeda, representative of the WG, as well as authors of the plan, those involved with peer review and proponents of this work. The writing of this long-term plan in Japan can be considered as the start of new research in the Arctic and an achievement for the system of Arctic researchers. We would like to show our deep appreciation for those who were involved in creation of this long-term plan. For this plan, we considered tasks to be worked on over the next ten to twenty years. Many themes from each field were included. The authors did not just emphasize their own interests and activities, but took a wide perspective and included important fields and objectives Japanese researchers should work on. Many of the themes dealt with there do not end in Japan, but are ideas at a high level of completion which can be proposed internationally. Changes in nature in the Arctic are happening at a rapid pace. The demands of a changing Arctic environment, as well as expectations and responsibilities of researchers, are increasing. Phenomena in the Arctic Circle are complex. Researchers are now expected to look at their own positions relative to the whole, to engage in cooperative research across fields, and for researchers of a particular field to learn from content of other fields. This “Long-term Plan for Arctic Environmental Research” allows researchers in the Japanese Arctic environment to show the challenges and directions of their own fields as well as to explore relations and movements in other fields. This provides an opportunity to deepen discussions of Arctic research, and the number of people participating in such research is expected to increase. Japan Consortium for Arctic Environmental Research, Chari of steering committee Hiroyuki Enomoto i Table of contents Chapter 1: The purposes of the long-term plan report ····················································· 1 Chapter 2: The background and particulars of this report ················································ 2 Chapter 3: Changes in the Arctic environment to date and in the near future ························ 3 Chapter 4: History of Arctic Environmental Research ····················································· 6 Chapter 5: Elucidation of abrupt environmental change in the Arctic associated with the on-going global warming ························································ 8 Theme 1: Arctic amplification of global warming ························································ 8 Q1: How does horizontal and vertical heat transport from lower to upper atmospheric layers affect Arctic warming amplification? ·························································· 9 Q2: Is the role of terrestrial snow cover, permafrost, vegetation, and ice sheets important? ···· 11 Q3: To what extent does the role of sea ice albedo and heat accumulation in the ocean vary seasonally? ································································· 12 Q4: Is it possible to quantify the role of clouds and aerosols? ······································ 14 Q5: Why is Arctic warming amplification occurring, and how uncertain are predictions? How are radiative forcing and feedback processes changing in the Arctic? ············ 15 Theme 2: Mechanisms and Influence of Sea Ice Decline ················································ 17 Q1: Do changes in wind pattern and sea ice fluidity promote sea ice reduction? ··············· 18 Q2: How does sea ice thermal reduction proceed? ·················································· 18 Q3: How does sea ice reduction influence cloud and cyclones? ··································· 20 Q4: How does sea ice reduction influence the ocean fields? ······································· 20 Decadal strategy in Japan ··············································································· 21 Theme 3: Biogeochemical cycle and ecosystem changes ··············································· 25 Q1: How are the concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols in the atmosphere changing? ····················································································· 26 Q2: How are biogeochemical cycles relate to terrestrial ecosystems changing? ················ 29 Q3: What is needed to quantify material transport from land to sea? ····························· 30 Q4: How are biogeochemical cycles that relate to marine ecosystems changing? ·············· 32 Theme 4: Ice sheet / glaciers, permafrost, snowfall / snow cover and hydrological cycle ········ 35 Q1: Will the change in ice sheet and glaciers accelerate? ·········································· 35 Q2: How will the permafrost change interlink with climate change? ····························· 38 Q3. How is the snowfall and snow cover of the Arctic Region changing? ······················· 40 Q4 How will the hydrological processes in the Arctic change? ··································· 41 Theme 5: Interactions between the Arctic and the entire earth ····································· 45 Q1: <Roles of the atmosphere> Is its variability intensified or weakened for example, the Arctic Oscillation? ······································································· 46 Q2: <Roles of the ocean> Is the water exchange between the Atlantic and the Pacific intensified? Is the deep water formation reduced? Is general circulation modified in the mid-latitudes? ········································································· 47 Q3: <Roles of the land> How does the variability in vegetation and permafrost have effects on carbon flux and the geochemical cycle? How does the variability in snow cover and vegetation have effects on energy and water balances at large scales? ······ 49 Q4: <Roles of the polar upper atmosphere> What effects does the upper atmosphere in the polar region have on the lower atmosphere and the whole region of the upper atmosphere? ···································································
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