Search

As the Arctic warms, permafrost coasts are eroding faster, threatening coastal communities, habitats, and altering sediment and nutrient budgets. The western Canadian Arctic is eroding at a rapid pace, however little is known on changes occurring in the in the Amundsen Bay area. This study was conducted in the eastern coast of Parry Peninsula, a neglected rocky coastal area. We used orthorectified aerial photos of 1965 and 1993 and very-high resolution satellite imagery of 2020 to manually delineate the shoreline and classify the backshore and foreshore typology. Shoreline change rates were calculated and the ArctiDEM was used to derive cliff height, allowing for estimating volume changes and soil organic carbon fluxes. The results show a mean rate of 0.13 m/yr for the backshore zone and 0.2 m/yr for the foreshore, with increasing erosion in the south sector of the Peninsula in the recent decades. The average sediment flux was 19 m3/m/yr and The SOC flux 6.7 kg C/m/yr. We highlight the importance of using the clifftop as shoreline reference to accurately estimate sediment fluxes, an approach that is neglected in automatic shoreline delineation techniques based on remote sensing imagery, which generally focus on the identification of the waterline.

Thematic webinars are one of the key communication formats within the strategy of EU-PolarNet 2 to foster cooperation at the European level. In 2021 the EU-PolarNet 2 organized six webinars, most in collaboration with the European Polar Board and the EU Polar Cluster. In order to increase visibility and impact, several webinars were presented in association to large events where different European and international stakeholders participated. These were the cases of the Arctic Science Ministerial 3 (April 2021), the All-Atlantic Conference 2022 (June 2021) and the UN COP26 (November 2021). The launch of the new EU Arctic Policy in 2021 provided an excellent framework to discuss the opportunities and needs for Arctic research and cooperation (November 2021). With the launch of the EU-PolarNet 2 call for service contracts, a novel contribution of the project, a webinar was also prepared for explaining the objectives and the application procedures (July 2021). With an internal focus on EU Polar Cluster projects, the impacts of COVID-19 on the members has been discussed, allowing to share best practices and to identify priority needs. The public webinars are available online, with links provided in the report.

The European polar research arena is composed by a diverse number of organisations and individuals, that work for consolidating the knowledge on the complex dynamics of the polar regions and their role in the Earth System. This 1st yearly report of the European Polar Research Highlights aims at providing an encompassing, but not exhaustive, insight on the rich contributions of Europe to polar research during the first year of EU-PolarNet 2. The selection of highlights is organised in 5 encompassing topics: Highlights of European research in the Arctic, Highlights of European research in the Antarctic, Fostering polar research, Insights into the EU Polar Cluster and Conference highlights.

This document provides the definitions used by the GTN-P Network, as well asa short description commonly used measurement techniques and sampling recommendations and guidelines. This is a provisional document. It will be substituted by the Permafrost Best Practices that will be published as part of the Update of the World Meteorological Organization Guide No. 8.

Book of abstracts of the Science Conference of the Arctic Science Summit Week 2021, held online from 23 to 26 March 2021. Website: http://www.assw2021.pt

Arctic warming is leading to an increased reduction in sea ice, with models for 2100 indicating a reduction in the Arctic sea ice area from 43 to 94% in September and from 8 to 34% in February (IPCC,2014). The increase of the sea-ice free season duration will result in more exposure of the coasts to wave action, with changing climate also modifying the contribution of terrestrial erosion processes. Coastal erosion can also be increased by warmer seawaters and sea-level rise, with more frequent storms and associated surge events leading to the increase in flooding.During the short open water season (June to October) there has been an increase coastal storms (wind speed > 36 km/h andsurge level > 1.5m), this has led to an increment in coastal erosion and flooding (Fritz et al., 2015, Ramage et al 2018, Irrgang et al 2018). This work focuses on the Hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk(Northwest Territories, Canada), where extensive ultra-high-resolution surveys with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been conducted, allowing to generate orthophoto mosaics, digital surface models (DSM), derived land use, geomorphological and socio-economic activity maps. DSMs, bathymetry and meteorological data are used as inputs for flood modelling in MOHID Water software. Validation is conducted using tide gauge and DGPS data from 2019,with the boundary conditions obtained from the FES2014 tide model (FiniteElement Solution). Both approaches run on LiDAR data from 2004 and the UAV DSMsfor direct comparison. This research is done in cooperation with the Hamlet,with the results being provided as a tool for strategical spatial planning,culminating in more resilient mitigation and adaptation measures to climate change. This research is funded by the European Commission H2020 project NUNATARYUK and by the Climate Change Preparedness in the North Program (CCPN). &nbsp

Ultra high resolution orthomosaic (Poster A0) of Pingo Canadian Landmark surveyed in July-August 2019.

Aerial orthomosaic of the hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk - Poster A0. Survey conducted in July/August of 2018 and 2019 using a Sensefly ebee and a Sensefly ebee RTK Plus. Spatial resolution 10 cm.

The Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost (GTN-P) is the primary international programme concerned with sustained long-term monitoring of permafrost.GTN-P was developed in the 1990s by the International Permafrost Association (IPA) under the Global Terrestrial Observing System (GTOS) as part of the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS). The two major components of GTN-P (Essential Climate Variables) are: (a) long-term monitoring of the thermal state of permafrost in an extensive borehole network, theThermal State of Permafrost - TSP; and (b) monitoring of theActive-layer thickness - ALT. Long-term monitoring of permafrost generates essential baseline information for the assessment of climate change impacts in polar and high mountain regions.

Arctic permafrost coasts are major carbon (Schuur et al., 2015) and mercury pools (Schuster et al., 2018). They represent about 34% of the Earth’s coastline, with long sections affected by high erosion rates (Fritz et al, 2017), increasingly threatening coastal communities. Year-round reduction in Arctic sea ice is forecasted and by the end of the 21st century, models indicate a decrease in sea ice area from 43 to 94% in September and from 8 to 34% in February (IPCC, 2014). An increase of the sea-ice free season leads to a longer exposure of coasts to wave action. Further, climate warming is also expected to modify the contribution of terrestrial erosion (Fritz et al., 2015, Ramage et al., 2018, Irrgang et al., 2018). Within the project EU Horizon2020 project NUNATARYUK, we are updating the mapping of the Arctic coast, with the Canadian Beaufort coast as a case-study. The surveying methodology includes: i. a high resolution update of the coastline mapping and change rates using Pleiades (CNES) satellite acquisitions from 2018, ii. a survey using RTK-UAV aerial imagery of long-term monitoring sites from the Canada-US border to King Point, and iii. the experimental use of TerraSAR-X staring spotlight scenes at key sites to monitor intraseasonal dynamics of cliff edge retreat. This research is funded by the EC H2020 Project NUNATARYUK. Support on remote sensing imagery access by the WMO Polar Space Task Group.

Arctic permafrost coasts are major carbon (Schuur et al., 2015) and mercury pools (Schuster et al 2018) and represent about 34% of Earth's coastline, with large sectors affected by high erosion rates (Fritz et al, 2017), increasingly affecting coastal communities. Year-round reduction in Arctic sea ice is forecasted and by the end of the 21st century, models indicate a decrease in sea ice area from 43 to 94% in September and from 8 to 34% in February (IPCC, 2014). An increase of the sea-ice free season duration will further expose coasts to wave action, with changing climate also modifying the contribution of terrestrial erosion (Fritz et al., 2015, Ramage et al 2018, Irrgang et al 2018). Within the project NUNATARYUK, we are updating the mapping of the Arctic coast and assessing the hazard exposure of communities, with the Beaufort Sea as a case-study. The surveying methodology includes: i. a high resolution update of the coastline mapping and change rates using Pleiades (CNES) satellite acquisitions from 2018, ii. a survey using RTK-UAV aerial imagery of long-term monitoring sites from the CanadaUS border to King Point, as well as sites in Amundsen Bay, and iii. ultra high-resolution surveys of coastal settlements using RTK-UAV in collaboration with communities aiming at improving coastal hazard assessment (e.g. Tuktoyaktuk and Paulatuk). This presentation shows the updates from this integrated coastal assessment with the field data from the summer of 2019.

Arctic permafrost coasts are major carbon (Schuur et al., 2015) and mercury pools (Schuster et al., 2018). They represent about 34% of the Earth’s coastline, with long sections affected by high erosion rates (Fritz et al, 2017), increasingly threatening coastal communities. Year-round reduction in Arctic sea ice is forecasted and by the end of the 21st century, models indicate a decrease in sea ice area from 43 to 94% in September and from 8 to 34% in February (IPCC, 2014). An increase of the sea-ice free season leads to a longer exposure of coasts to wave action. Further, climate warming is also expected to modify the contribution of terrestrial erosion (Fritz et al., 2015, Ramage et al., 2018, Irrgang et al., 2018). Within the project EU Horizon2020 project NUNATARYUK, we are updating the mapping of the Arctic coast, with the Canadian Beaufort coast as a case-study. The surveying methodology includes: i. a high resolution update of the coastline mapping and change rates using Pleiades (CNES) satellite acquisitions from 2018, ii. a survey using RTK-UAV aerial imagery of long-term monitoring sites from the Canada-US border to King Point, and iii. the experimental use of TerraSAR-X staring spotlight scenes at key sites to monitor intraseasonal dynamics of cliff edge retreat. This research is funded by the EC H2020 Project NUNATARYUK. Support on remote sensing imagery access by the WMO Polar Space Task Group. &nbsp