Introduction : The Pan-Eurasian Experiment (PEEX) - multidisciplinary, multiscale and multicomponent research and capacity-building initiative

The Pan-Eurasian Experiment (PEEX) is a multidisciplinary, multiscale and multicomponent research, research infrastructure and capacity-building program. PEEX has originated from a bottom-up approach by the science communities and is aiming at resolving the major uncertainties in Earth system science and global sustainability issues concerning the Arctic and boreal pan-Eurasian regions, as well as China. The vision of PEEX is to solve interlinked, global grand challenges influencing human well-being and societies in northern Eurasia and China. Such challenges include climate change; air quality; biodiversity loss; urbanization; chemicalization; food and freshwater availability; energy production; and use of natural resources by mining, industry, energy production and transport sectors. Our approach is integrative and supra-disciplinary, recognizing the important role of the Arctic and boreal ecosystems in the Earth system. The PEEX vision includes establishing and maintaining long-term, coherent and coordinated research activities as well as continuous, comprehensive research and educational infrastructure and related capacity-building across the PEEX domain. In this paper we present the PEEX structure and summarize its motivation, objectives and future outlook.Peer reviewe

Pan-Eurasian Experiment (PEEX): Towards a holistic understanding of the feedbacks and interactions in the land-Atmosphere-ocean-society continuum in the northern Eurasian region

The northern Eurasian regions and Arctic Ocean will very likely undergo substantial changes during the next decades. The Arctic-boreal natural environments play a crucial role in the global climate via albedo change, carbon sources and sinks as well as atmospheric aerosol production from biogenic volatile organic compounds. Furthermore, it is expected that global trade activities, demographic movement, and use of natural resources will be increasing in the Arctic regions. There is a need for a novel research approach, which not only identifies and tackles the relevant multi-disciplinary research questions, but also is able to make a holistic system analysis of the expected feedbacks. In this paper, we introduce the research agenda of the Pan-Eurasian Experiment (PEEX), a multi-scale, multi-disciplinary and international program started in 2012 (https://www.atm.helsinki.fi/peex/). PEEX sets a research approach by which large-scale research topics are investigated from a system perspective and which aims to fill the key gaps in our understanding of the feedbacks and interactions between the land-Atmosphere-Aquatic-society continuum in the northern Eurasian region. We introduce here the state of the art for the key topics in the PEEX research agenda and present the future prospects of the research, which we see relevant in this context

Turbulence and Fossil Turbulence in Oceans and Lakes

Turbulence is defined as an eddy-like state of fluid motion where the inertial-vortex forces of the eddies are larger than any of the other forces that tend to damp the eddies out. Energy cascades of irrotational flows from large scales to small are non-turbulent, even if they supply energy to turbulence. Turbulent flows are rotational and cascade from small scales to large, with feedback. Viscous forces limit the smallest turbulent eddy size to the Kolmogorov scale. In stratified fluids, buoyancy forces limit large vertical overturns to the Ozmidov scale and convert the largest turbulent eddies into a unique class of saturated, non-propagating, internal waves, termed fossil-vorticity-turbulence. These waves have the same energy but different properties and spectral forms than the original turbulence patch. The Gibson (1980, 1986) theory of fossil turbulence applies universal similarity theories of turbulence and turbulent mixing to the vertical evolution of an isolated patch of turbulence in a stratified fluid as its growth is constrained and fossilized by buoyancy forces. These theories apply to the dynamics of atmospheric, astrophysical and cosmological turbulence.Comment: 31 pages, 11 figures, 2 tables, see http://www-acs.ucsd.edu/~ir118 Accepted for publication by the Chinese Journal of Oceanology and Limnolog