Long-term multidisciplinary research along a gradient of high latitudes to track climate change: from station-based studies to new observatory concepts

• Main Authors: Jerosch, Kerstin, Beierlein, Lars, Schloss, Irene R., Sahade, Ricardo, Quartino, Maria Liliana, Gonzáles, Humberto, Ferreyra, Gustavo A., Abele, Doris
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: Antarctic; Antarctic Cove; Antarctic Peninsula; Carlini Station; King George Island; Potter Cove; South Shetland Islands; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Tidewater; Tierra del Fuego
• Online Access: https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/47172/; https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.2ed58b61-2a46-441a-807d-e8a984a51d30

The coastal polar and subpolar systems are particularly affected by a rapid regional climate change. Gathering hydrographic core and specific ecological data for the past 25 years at the Dallmann-Carlini station in Potter Cove (King George Island, South Shetland Islands) has proven a continuous observation to be essential for understanding the dynamic changes of marine and terrestrial ecosystems in the Northern West Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) sector. Several long-term ecological data series were analyzed to track climate change across system compartments from glaciology to community composition. It is for the first time ever that the ecological impacts of the transgression from a tidewater to an exclusively land based glacier in an Antarctic cove is documented by a multi-disciplinary research team. While focusing on the climate change related processes in the showcase area Potter Cove, expansion of the research scope to compare the local King George Island to the regional recent and late Holocene deglaciation patterns at the WAP are planed through cross station networking with USA and UK partner activities in different areas of the WAP (recent Belmont call on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services proposal FjordBioServices) and towards the sub-Antarctic systems of Tierra del Fuego. In order to improve our understanding of climate change effects on highly dynamic and understudied areas in the Antarctic and Sub-Antarctic the SCAR community highlighted the importance of coastal observatories. Mirroring our previous multinational, interdisciplinary observations in Potter Cove, BLOOMS, we introduce to the Beagle Land and Ocean Observing and Modelling System, a multinational (Argentinian, Chilean, German, and USA) and interdisciplinary initiative to study the effects of climate change on terrestrial and marine systems. A first workshop on the implementation of an observatory, supported by Argentinian and German funds within the frame of the DynAMo project (Dynamic Effects of Climate Change and loss of ice mass on ...