The overall goal of Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System (SIOS) is to establish an Arctic Earth Observing System in and around Svalbard that integrates the studies of geophysical, chemical and biological processes from all research and monitoring platforms.

SIOS is now underway, as part of the roadmap for the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI). With EUR 4 million secured from EU for the preparatory phase, and additional funding from the Norwegian Research Council, the project was launched with a kick-off conference in Oslo last month.

The preparatory phase will run from October 1, 2010 till October 1, 2013.

Why Svalbard?
The High Arctic is generally considered an early warning region for climate change. It’s widely accepted that global warming will appear here first and most rapidly due to positive feedback processes. At the same time, teleconnections exist between lower and higher latitudes which connect the Arctic to the global system. Thus, developments in the north have global impacts.

SIOS is designed to be a major building block of a Sustained Arctic Observing System (SAON), building on the recommendations put forward by AON (NAP, 2006: Towards an Integrated Arctic Observing Network (AON).

SIOS in this context is an opportunity for Europe to establish a central node that will pave the road for a future circum-Arctic monitoring network.

SIOS has been proposed because the environmental and climate-related challenges of our time require an Earth System approach, and because observation systems have not been developed with the same systematic approach as Earth System modelling. It is also a motivation for SIOS to secure the legacy of the International Polar Year (IPY) and further develop the data series of the High Arctic that have been established in recent years.

Svalbard has over the years attracted research organizations from all over the world and the archipelago hosts today extensive research infrastructure. This infrastructure forms the basis for the observation platform that SIOS aims to be.

The Svalbard Science Centre. (Photo: Steve Coulson/UNIS).

Preparatory phase 2010-2013
In the preparatory phase, a survey of all relevant infrastructure on Svalbard will be done, and identification of what is lacking in order to establish observation systems observation systems for marine, ice, atmospheric and terrestrial conditions. The need for systematic work on how to combine data from observation systems to modeling systems is a crucial point of SIOS in the future.

Part of the project is to provide a basis for establishing a joint knowledge centre in Longyearbyen. UNIS will be in charge of the integration of this work along with all the other partners of SIOS. However, Alfred Wegner Institute (AWI), University of Groningen (RUG) and The Research Council of Norway (RCN) and Svalbard Science forum (SFF) have specific tasks in the work and will work more closely with UNIS than the others in this respect.

To keep the knowledge centre as a frontrunner in terms of arctic data – for an international research and policy making market – it is important that space and time integrating facilities are being prepared for the Earth System Modelling.

SIOS –institutions

Full partner

Associated partners

Contact person: Senior advisor Ragnhild Rønneberg

Relevant documents (Pdf)

SIOS in the media

More information