ANTARES: the first undersea neutrino telescope

The ANTARES Neutrino Telescope was completed in May 2008 and is the first operational Neutrino Telescope in the Mediterranean Sea. The main purpose of the detector is to perform neutrino astronomy and the apparatus also offers facilities for marine and Earth sciences. This paper describes the design, the construction and the installation of the telescope in the deep sea, offshore from Toulon in France. An illustration of the detector performance is given

A roadmap for Antarctic and Southern Ocean science for the next two decades and beyond

Antarctic and Southern Ocean science is vital to understanding natural variability, the processes that govern global change and the role of humans in the Earth and climate system. The potential for new knowledge to be gained from future Antarctic science is substantial. Therefore, the international Antarctic community came together to ‘scan the horizon’ to identify the highest priority scientific questions that researchers should aspire to answer in the next two decades and beyond. Wide consultation was a fundamental principle for the development of a collective, international view of the most important future directions in Antarctic science. From the many possibilities, the horizon scan identified 80 key scientific questions through structured debate, discussion, revision and voting. Questions were clustered into seven topics: i)Antarctic atmosphere and global connections, ii) Southern Ocean and sea ice in a warming world, iii) ice sheet and sea level, iv) the dynamic Earth, v) life on the precipice, vi) near-Earth space and beyond, and vii) human presence in Antarctica. Answering the questions identified by the horizon scan will require innovative experimental designs, novel applications of technology, invention of next-generation field and laboratory approaches, and expanded observing systems and networks. Unbiased, non-contaminating procedures will be required to retrieve the requisite air, biota, sediment, rock, ice and water samples. Sustained year-round access toAntarctica and the Southern Ocean will be essential to increase winter-time measurements. Improved models are needed that represent Antarctica and the Southern Ocean in the Earth System, and provide predictions at spatial and temporal resolutions useful for decision making. A co-ordinated portfolio of cross-disciplinary science, based on new models of international collaboration, will be essential as no scientist, programme or nation can realize these aspirations alone.Tinker Foundation, Antarctica New Zealand, The New Zealand Antarctic Research Institute, the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), the Council of Managers of National Antarctic Programs (COMNAP), the Alfred Wegner Institut, Helmholtz Zentrum für Polar und Meeresforschung (Germany), and the British Antarctic Survey (UK).http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=ANShb201

Process-resolving Regional Arctic System Model for Advanced Modeling and Prediction of Arctic Climate System

15th Conference on Polar Meteorology and OceanographyThe Regional Arctic System Model (RASM) is a fully coupled limited-domain ice-ocean-atmosphere-land hydrology model. Its domain is pan-Arctic, with the atmosphere and land components configured on a 50-km or 25-km grid. The ocean and sea ice components are configured on rotated sphere meshes with four configuration options: 1/12o (~9.3km) or 1/48o (~2.4km) in the horizontal space and with 45 or 60 vertical layers. As a regional climate model, RASM requires boundary conditions along its lateral boundaries and in the upper atmosphere, which are derived either from global atmospheric reanalyses for simulations of the past to present or from Earth System models (ESMs) for climate projections. In the former case, this allow comparison of RASM results with observations in place and time, which is a unique capability not available in global ESMs. RASM has been developed and used to investigate critical processes controlling the evolution of the Arctic climate system under a diminishing sea ice cover. Several examples of key physical processes and coupling between different model components will be presented, that improve the representation of the past and present Arctic climate system. The impact of such processes and feedbacks will be discussed with regard to improving model physics and reducing biases in the representation of its initial state for prediction of Arctic climate at time scales from synoptic to intra-annual

Six priorities for Antartic soil

No abstract availablehttp://www.nature.com/naturehb201

Reactive nitrogen and sulphate wet deposition at Zeppelin Station, Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard

As a potent fertilizer, reactive nitrogen plays an important role in Arctic ecosystems. Since the Arctic is a nutrient-limited environment, changes in nitrogen deposition can have severe impacts on local ecosystems. To quantify the amount of nitrogen deposited through snow and rain events, precipitation sampling was performed at Zeppelin Station, Svalbard, from November 2009 until May 2011. The samples were analysed for , nss- and concentrations, and the deposition of single precipitation events was calculated using precipitation measurements taken at nearby Ny-Ålesund. The majority of observed events showed concentrations ranging from 0.01 to 0.1 mg L−1 N for and and from 0.02 to 0.3 mg L−1 S for nss-. The majority of calculated depositions ranged from 0.01 to 0.1 mg m−2 N for and and from 0.02 to 0.3 mg m−2 S for nss-. The budget was controlled by strong deposition events, caused by long-lasting precipitation episodes that lasted for several days and which had raised concentrations of nitrogen and sulphur. Three future scenarios of increasing precipitation in the Arctic were considered. The results showed that deposition is mainly controlled by the amount of precipitation, which leads to the conclusion that increased precipitation might cause increases in deposition of the same magnitude