Special Session, Climate of the Polar Regions: Workshop on Winter
Convection in the Greenland and Labrador Seas, at the EGS-AGU-EUG Joint
Assembly
Nice, France
6-11 April 2003
For more information see the conference website at:
http://www.copernicus.org/egsagueug/index.html
Deadline for Receipt of Abstracts: 15 January 2003
At the forthcoming EGS-AGU joint assembly in Nice on 6-11 April 2003
there will be a session on the climate of the Polar Regions within which
there will be a special session/workshop entitled Climate of the Polar
Regions: A Special workshop on winter convection in the Greenland and
Labrador Seas. This is intended to be a forum for the discussion for
latest results on the processes of convection and overturning in the
Greenland and Labrador Seas and the ways in which this circulation is
being effected by climate change.
We encourage everyone to submit a paper to this session and please note
that abstracts must be submitted by 15 January 2003.
The address for electronic submission is: egs.abstracts [at] copernicus.org
The session identification number is: CL2.05
Session information:
There is growing evidence that the climate of the polar regions is
changing rapidly as an element in the global warming process. In the
northern hemisphere there is a marked warming trend, enhanced by the
ice-albedo feedback mechanism, and also a cyclic variability associated
with the Arctic Oscillation. This manifests itself in changed
atmospheric circulation patterns, changes in air temperature and
precipitation, and changes in sea ice thickness, ocean structure,
glacier mass balance, snowlines and permafrost depth. In the Antarctic
the warming trend appears to be limited to the Antarctic Peninsula for
reasons not clearly known. We welcome papers on observations and
modelling of polar climatic variability, as well as the impacts of this
variability on the polar environment (e.g. ocean, ice, snow, permafrost
properties, glacial retreat) and on the global environment (e.g. rate of
sea level rise). As this is an ocean session the emphasis will be on the
relationship between climate change and ocean processes.
A special component of this session will be a sub-session: WORKSHOP ON
WINTER CONVECTION IN THE GREENLAND AND LABRADOR SEAS. At present there
is enormous attention being paid to the role that oceanic convection in
the Greenland and Labrador Seas, and its possible shutoff, can have on
the climate of the northern hemisphere. This includes simulations which
suggest a future regional cooling in NW Europe, and also models which
ascribe rapid paleoclimatic events to changes in the Atlantic
thermohaline circulation associated with convection shutdown or turn-on.
Following extensive research on the Labrador Sea by the LabSea group and
others, there has recently been a large research effort, both
experimentally and through modelling, on the Greenland Sea and the
interaction between convection and climate. EU projects such as
CONVECTION, VEINS and ESOP have studied this problem, and the workshop
provides an opportunity for latest results to be presented and to be
compared and discussed by the European and US research communities.
Details of the meeting and this session can be found at:
http://www.copernicus.org/egsagueug/index.html