Europe's Space capabilities for the benefit of the Arctic

• Main Authors: BONIFACE Karen, GIOIA Ciro, POZZOLI Luca, DIEHL Thomas, DOBRICIC Srdan, FORTUNY GUASCH Joaquim, VAN WIMERSMA GREIDANUS Herman, KLIMENT Tomas, KUCERA Jan, JANSSENS-MAENHOUT Greet, SOILLE Pierre, STROBL Peter, WILSON Julian
• Language: English
• Published: Publications Office of the European Union 2020
• Subjects: Arctic; Climate change
• Online Access: https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC118965; https://doi.org/10.2760/43511; https://doi.org/10.2760/641049

In recent years, the Arctic region has acquired an increasing environmental, social, economic and strategic importance. The Arctic’s fragile environment is both a direct and key indicator of the climate change and requires specific mitigation and adaptation actions. The EU has a clear strategic interest in playing a key role and is actively responding to the impacts of climate change safeguarding the Arctic’s fragile ecosystem, ensuring a sustainable development, particularly in the European part of the Arctic.The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre has recently completed a study aimed at identifying the capabilities and relevant synergies across the four domains of the EU Space Programme: earth observation, satellite navigation, satellite communications, and space situational awareness (SSA). These synergies are expected to be key enablers of new services that will have a high societal impact in the region, which could be developed in a more cost-efficient and rapid manner. Similarly, synergies will also help exploit to its full extent operational services that are already deployed in the Arctic (e.g., the Copernicus emergency service or the Galileo Search and rescue service could greatly benefit from improved satellite communications connectivity in the region). JRC.E.2 - Technology Innovation in Security