This week, there is the GEO Week 2023 & Ministerial Summit event in Cape Town, South Africa, from 6th November to 10th November.
On Monday, there was a wonderful Opening Ceremony with music by South Africa Youth Choir. There has been interesting flash talks, workshops and showcases related to for example climate, biodiversity and air quality. Today, the GEO Planery sessions have just started, continuing tomorrow and on Friday there will be the Ministerial Summit.
ArcticGEOSS has a booth in GEO Week where several Arctic PASSION services are presented related to permafrost, wildfires, sea ice, air pollution and lake ice. In addition, defining Share Arctic Variables (SAVs) in Arctic PASSION project is told about. Also some Finnish actions such as HarvesterDestinE, TARKKA, Crowdsourcing and Biodiversity monitoring with EO is presented.
At the booth, people from the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI), Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) and SIOS are welcoming you to come and hear more.
ArcticGEOSS will be visible this week in South Africa, where there will be an Exhibition booth in GEO Week event with several interesting posters presented by Arctic PASSION project. There will be presentation of services, contributing projects and Shared Arctic Variables progress. The posters will be presented at the Exhibition booth during lunch and coffee breaks according to the attached agenda.
If you are attending GEO Week come to our stand to hear about
Arctic PASSION pilots:
PS2: ”Pilot Service – Permafrost”
PS4: ”Pilot Service – INtegrated FireRisk mAnagement (INFRA)”
PS5: “Pilot Service 5 – Local atmospheric pollutant forecast”
PS6: ”Pilot Service – Improving Safety for Shipping in the Polar Seas”
PS8: “Lake Ice Service for Arctic Climate and Safety”
The EU project Arctic PASSION comes from the words: Pan-Arctic observing System of Systems: Implementing Observations for societal Needs. It will develop eight new amazing EuroGEO Pilot Services. Those are focused on the themes: ‘Event Database of CBM Using Oral Histories, IK and LK’, ‘Permafrost’, ‘State of the Arctic Environment’, ‘Integrated Fire Risk Management’, ‘Local Atmospheric Pollutant Forecast’, ‘Improving Safety for Shipping in the Polar Seas’, ‘CBM for Arctic marine climate change, noise pollution & impacts on marine living resources’ and ‘Lake Ice Service for Arctic Climate and Safety’.
The Pilot Services will be user-driven and co-created with local and Indigenous Peoples, scientific, policy and decision maker communities as well as private and public sectors.
Event Database of CBM (Community Based Monitoring) Using Oral Histories, IK (Indigenous Knowledge) and LK (Local Knowledge)
Knowledge on environmental change will be gathered in seven regions by combining Indigenous Knowledge, Local Knowledge and science. In addition, there will be a so called Event Database, a database of socio-ecological relevant Events. The focus will be on ecosystem changes of significance. Information will be gained by gathering information through workshops, interviews, Indigenous documentation, art and paintings etc. These observations will be compared to scientific observations to understand more about the events and to evaluate if it is possible to jointly reconstruct key events.
Pan-Arcticrequirements driven Permafrost Service
This service will report on permafrost temperature and surface/active layer changes related to permafrost thaw. Landsat and Sentinel-2 timeseries data will be used to provide near real time maps of surface changes related to abrupt permafrost thaw disturbances. The best practices for GTN-P (Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost) observations will be established as well as the first global measurement standards for the permafrost ECV (Essential Climate Variable).
State of the Arctic Environment Service
This service will give information about the state of the Arctic environment and climate system on a one-stop website. It will provide both already existing and new data, covering atmosphere, land, ocean and cryosphere and utilize data both from remote sensing and in situ observations. The users will be able to better understand the status of key environmental indicators and their trends. The selected data will be visualized in maps and as timeseries.
Integrated Fire Risk Management (INFRA) Service
In the summer of 2021, there were record emissions in Russia that were caused by severe wildfires. More than 10 million hectares were burned. The CAMS (Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service) data can be used to monitor emissions in the atmosphere from for example wildfires and volcanoes. It is possible to get information about the number of fires, the size of the areas, the intensity of the fires and their persistence. With Copernicus Sentinel-3 imagery it has been possible to see for example the burn scare of the largest fire, that lasted from the end of June until the mid-August (see https://www.copernicus.eu/en/media/image-day-gallery/severe-wildfires-caused-record-emissions-russia-during-summer-2021 ).
Credit: European Union, Copernicus Sentinel-3 imagery
The Arctic Passion Integrated Fire Risk Management (INFRA) service will improve the response to wildfires in the Arctic. There will be a web-based system to support fire management. It includes a risk map, combination of ground and satellite-based information for early identification of fires and short-term evolution maps of fire events. The service will combine near real time ground-based information to weather forecast and satellite products, make risk maps and forecasts, both observations and models will be used to get information about short-term development and propagation of wildfire. In addition, a platform for emergency management will be made. It will enable risk analysis and emergency management and will be tested in real operational conditions during fire season in selected areas.
Local Atmospheric Pollutant Forecast Service
This service will improve forecasts of anthropogenic and natural causes of air pollution. It will link air pollution in situ observations to large-scale atmospheric fields to inform on airborne pollution impacts. Model forecasts will be combined with local observations of atmospheric pollution improving the local short-term forecasts. There will be information about short-term high particulate levels included. The forecasts are provided as visual diagnostics that show temporal evolution and forecast of air pollution at different Arctic stations (observed vs. forecasted) and local forecasts from large-scale dynamic models vs. those combined with local observations leading to more precise forecasts than before.
Improving Safety for Shipping in the Polar Seas Service
This will be an operational service that will better quantify risk for vessels that are navigating in ice-covered waters. It combines information from the vessel’s automatic identification system (AIS), ice class and other characteristics of the vessel, ice charts, sea ice information products and satellite images. There will be a POLARIS risk index outcome (RIO) score provided in near real time that will estimate the operational limitations of vessels in the local ice conditions. Historical data analysis will show trends in vessel operations and how sea ice driven changes are linked to RIO scores. The service will provide forecasts that give predicted RIO scores for tactical and strategic use in ship-routing and safety decisions.
CBM for Arctic marine climate change, noise pollution & impacts on marine living resources
This service will support food security, building local capacity, sustainability and decision making in Greenland coastal communities. It will monitor the marine climate and noisescape in coastal zones. There will be 2-4 sites equipped and maintained in order to get information about the presence of marine mammals and marine climate and noisescape in Arctic marine waters. Sound recording and oceanographic sensors will be used. Training will be given to local youth to use instruments and handle data and a visual integrated atlas of annual sound recordings and marine activities will be set up.
Lake Ice Service for Arctic Climate and Safety
This service provides near real time information about the ice conditions of freshwater lakes. This information is important for example for understanding ice-related changes and climate change. Lake ice is sensitive to intra-annual temperature fluctuations and long-term temperature trends. Importantly, lake ice affects water quality, the lake ecology and local weather by reducing the energy exchange between water and the atmosphere. Information about lake ice is also significant in terms of safety issues. As cloud cover obscures the visibility of optical sensors to ground, there is an urgent need to develop an observing system for lake ice that combines the in situ and Earth Observation (EO) information. The Lake Ice Service is meant to fill this gap by providing EO and in situ data (Community Based Monitoring and governmental observation networks) in an easy-to-access and simple format. This will improve the quality of the Copernicus Lake Ice Extent products. The Lake Ice Service is implemented in SYKE’s TARKKA+ service, which is a highly customizable web application framework for visualizing spatiotemporal data both on map and as statistical timeseries.
A screenshot of TARKKA+ presenting Lake ice extent of Northern Europe and true color images.
Other interesting pilots from another project
As climate is changing, permafrost thaw could have impact on water flows. An interesting pilot, Hydropower in snow reservoir– climate service, that increases information related to the Arctic, has been developed recently in the E-shape project. Below, are some details of the pilot.
Eshape pilot Hydropower in snow reservoir – climate service (Kemijoki)
Hydropower companies are using forecasts of reservoir inflow and energy prices to schedule the timing and quantity of releases for daily, weekly and seasonal operations. In E-Shape project, there is a pilot called Hydropower in snow reservoir – climate service. It tries to find ways how the reliability of the forecasts can be improved. Uncertainties in hydrological model snowpack simulation can be reduced by using EO based snow observations. The observations (snow depth data) from Sentinel satellites are used to provide basin wide information about the state of the snowpack in higher resolution. EO based snow water equivalent data is used to assess uncertainties of the model forecast. In addition, webcam snow monitoring can be used. The forecast component will be added to the HOPS (Hydrological Operations and Predictions System) model that is driven by C3S seasonal forecast. See https://e-shape.eu/index.php/showcases/pilot7-4-hydropower-in-snow-reservoir-climate-service or https://hops.fmi.fi/ .
Example of another pilot is HarvesterSeasons that can increase a lot of information related to the Arctic, also about forest fire index. Below, are some details about HarvesterSeasons.
HarvesterSeasons
HarvesterSeasons is a new mobile and web application that helps to manage harvesting in Finland. It is developed by the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) and two stakeholders from forest industry; Metsäteho and Metsä Group. It gives important information about soil conditions and highlights good or bad conditions for vehicles to traverse specific terrains (trafficability). It combines information from weather forecasts, satellite measurements and a hydrological model. The monthly seasonal forecast data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) is used. The application supports the planning of forestry operations by providing several layers, including soil wetness, soil temperature, snow thickness, tree cover percent in 2018 and forest fire index. The seasonal forecasts will help to predict how soil conditions will change over six or seven months ahead. The soil and snow condition model outputs are shown as simple trafficability information.
The new project called Arctic PASSION has started. It comes from the words: Pan-Arctic observing System of Systems: Implementing Observations for societal Needs. The consortium consists of 35 partners from 17 different countries. In addition, there are indigenous communities and a huge number of collaborating partners involved.
The objective of the project is to integrate and improve existing Arctic observing system elements and to co-create a pan-Arctic Observing System of Systems, that is more integrated and coherent. It will work on knowledge also from indigenous and local communities to respectfully combine it with science data. The project will enhance and integrate Arctic observations and improve Arctic data management. It also aims to simplify access to Arctic data. It will develop Shared Arctic Variables (SAVs) and the “Arctic window of Copernicus” and deliver new EuroGEO pilot services that address end-user needs. The societal benefits will be estimated, and decision makers will be supported. In addition, the project will enhance international collaboration and clustering.
In addition, one of the objectives is to lift Arctic GEOSS in GEO from community activity to GEO initiative and lets start with it by revitalizing this site with some exciting news about what is happening in the project – posted here.
