Norwegian contributions to Arctic environmental sciences from the 1880s to the third International Polar Year

• Main Author: Barry, Roger G.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Polar Research Institute of China - PRIC 2016
• Subjects: Projects; Advances in Polar Science; Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Barents Sea; Climate change; Global warming; International Polar Year; IPY; Norwegian Polar Institute; Polar Science; Queen Elizabeth Islands; Sea ice; Svalbard
• Online Access: http://library.arcticportal.org/2588/; http://library.arcticportal.org/2588/1/A020160101.pdf

This paper reviews the major contributions made by Norwegian scientists to Arctic environmental sciences since the 1880s. The review begins with the first International Polar Year (IPY) in 1882–83. It then considers the 1890s to 1920s with the scientific expeditions focusing on ocean and sea ice conditions of Nansen, Amundsen and H. Sverdrup, and the mapping of the Queen Elizabeth Islands by Otto Sverdrup and colleagues. The period from 1911 to the mid-1920s also witnessed annual expeditions to Svalbard led by Adolf Hoel. The 1930s to 1945 period encompassed the Second International Polar Year when Arctic weather stations were established or maintained. The time interval post-World War II to 2000 witnessed major advances made possible by technical and organizational innovations. The establishment of the Norwegian Polar Institute in 1948 led to extensive research on the glaciers and snow cover in the Svalbard archipelago and to oceanographic and sea ice research in the Barents Sea and Arctic Ocean. Remote sensing methods began to be widely used from the 1980s. The new millennium saw the undertaking of the third IPY and a shift to multinational projects. New fields such as ocean–ice–atmosphere variability became active and there was much attention to high-latitude climate change in the context of global warming.