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This report summarizes the discussions during two virtual meetings with different stakeholders with interest in the Barents Sea and off-Greenland ecosystems, respectively. The meetings were based on the work from Task 6.8 “Demonstrations for fisheries and environmental management agencies” and Task 6.2. “Improved ecosystem understanding and management”. Stakeholders represented a broad specter of marine- and maritime-related authorities in Norway, Greenland and Denmark, the fishing industry, the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF) working group of the Arctic Council, Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, INTAROS partners and participants from other EU projects. The presentations of the monitoring and model results were refined and angled to be of relevance and use for the participating stakeholders. The stakeholders were in general interested in the approach, results, and conclusions. The discussion made it clear that as users in charge of sectorial human activity management, they valued scientific testing and suggestions for improving ecosystem understanding. They recommended that the next step could be to look at not only national data set indicators, but also relate those to an Arctic international setting. The Norwegian Environmental Agency suggested that a climate approach would be useful also for the Barents Sea. Likewise, the more complex food web indicators presented for the Barents Sea could be useful to apply to the Greenland coastal system. Stakeholders from both geographic areas emphasized that data from long-term monitoring of key variables is important for their work and that models can be useful as supporting information on indicators and future scenarios if the model uncertainty is assessed and explained. These seminars highlight the importance of inviting stakeholders responsible for all sectors of marine-related human activities to dialogues on research and monitoring of the climate, natural resources and ecosystems. In a fast-changing scientific world, with an increasing amount of knowledge, it is important to make available, timely and in the right format, the best possible information.

A detailed understanding of how anthropogenic activities affect ecosystems and the services they provide is essential for sustainable management. However, assessments of the impact of multiple drivers on complex ecosystems is often challenged by lack of data at the relevant spatio-temporal resolution or knowledge of interactions among drivers. The SW Greenland coast and shelf is important for the industrial and sustenance fishing that is essential for Greenland. Here, we aim to describe decadal changes of the ecosystem and identify key drivers. To describe ecosystem dynamics we analysed changes in the 33 species of demersal fish found in 5713 bottom trawls collected on the shelf from 1993 to 2016. We find substantial increase in average biomass combined with increases in average individual weight, average trophic level and composition of dominant species. Using previous studies as a baseline we interpret the observed changes as a partial recovery of an over-exploited system. Sea ice cover, run-off from the Greenland Ice Sheet, seafloor trawling and water mass distribution are all known drivers of ecosystem change in the study area. Although, the impact of each driver varies over the last 2-3 decades all appear to facilitate increase in fish biomass. Climate change-related melting of sea ice and the Greenland Ice Sheet likely sustained increased primary production by increasing light and nutrient availability. Increases in temperature and salinity indicates increased inflow of Atlantic water, which increase connectivity to lower latitude systems. Finally, decreased trawling effort combined with mitigation measures to decrease by-catch may have decreased fish mortality. This suggest that a combination climate change and long-term hydrographic variability may have facilitated the recovery of fish stocks. Finally, the massive changes observed in fish biomass, size and trophic level of the fish community is likely to be a strong driver for cascading effects to other components of the SW Greenland shelf ecosystem.

The main aim of this deliverable is to offer advice on how the practice of applying existing observational data, ecosystem models, and indicators may be expanded from the Barents Sea and Disko Bay, West-Greenland to a wider range of Arctic sea regions and ecosystems. Further, we build advice and recommendations upon the established Norwegian Barents Sea ecosystem management plan, the more local management system for Disko Bay and focused individual and group interaction with a wide range of stakeholders in both areas. The expected impact is to provide advice on the most relevant and useful scientific basis for better-informed decisions and better-documented processes for managers and policymakers on local, regional and pan-Arctic scales. We conclude that both observational data and models are needed to get a holistic overview of the ecosystem status and to make reliable projections. The ecosystem models applied have different structural complexity and spatial resolutions making them suited for different roles in supporting the existing and future integrated Arctic Observation System (iAOS). The NoBa Atlantis model, applied to the Barents Sea, is the most complex model including many trophic levels and a range of anthropogenic pressures. It is highly suitable to make management scenarios and indices of higher trophic levels but is more coarsely resolved in time and space than the other two models we use. NORWECOM.E2E is a well-established model system with high temporal-spatial resolution for the Barents Sea. It has the carbon cycle and key fish species included.NORWECOM.E2E is well suited for making Observing System Simulation Experiments. FlexSem-ERGOM is a relatively new model for lower tropic levels with the highest spatial resolution among the three models, but with focus on smaller coastal systems and environmental changes. In INTAROS it has been set up for the Disko Bay. It has the advantage of being very flexible and can easily be adapted to a wide range of local ecosystems in the Arctic. Interaction with stakeholders from fisheries, maritime, and petroleum management and industry, and especially environmental management, has been a central part of our work. How the different stakeholders want to be informed, and what kind of information they seek, is presented, showing that managers are not negative to inclusion of well tested models in future ecosystem state and trend reports. Stakeholders generally found that models are useful, but that model uncertainty should be clearly communicated. Hence, there is a basis for future application of models for advice to especially environmental management. The interaction between scientists and a wide range of managers and industry representatives established in INTAROS and other ongoing projects will be continued despite no established dedicated long-term funding. The current report is based on the work carried out in INTAROS Task 6.2 “Improved ecosystem understanding and management” and Task 6.8 “Demonstrations for fisheries and environmental management agencies&rdquo

This document, aimed to predict the contribution of glaciers to sea level rise, has been carried out as part of Task 6.4 - Natural hazards in the Arctic. This deliverable describes a modelling-based approach developed by Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) to quantify the partitioning of solid ice discharge into its two main components, namely iceberg calving and submarine melting. For Greenlandic glaciers, it can take advantage of using, as part of its input data, those produced by the freshwater runoff product developed by the Geological Survey of Greenland and Denmark (GEUS), and the modelling-based estimates of solid ice discharge (obtained as sum of iceberg calving and submarine melting) can be validated against those produced by the solid ice discharge product developed by GEUS. This deliverable is conceived as a demonstration to stakeholders, who, in our case, are primarily researchers interested in estimating the current contribution of glacier wastage to sea-level rise and the future projections of such contributions under various scenarios of greenhouse gasses emissions. The demonstration is based on a video (ca. 20 min.) available through the INTAROS YouTube channel and the education material available though the INTAROS website. There is also a shorter version (a trailer, ca. 4 min.) of the video, aimed to provide an overview of the contents of the longer version. This written report provides a more detailed account of the coupled glacier dynamics-fjord circulation model in which the procedure for partitioning the ice discharge into its main components is based. Alternatively, there is a simpler version of the model, which is a coupled glacier dynamics-buoyant plume model that greatly reduces the computation time, while still providing sufficiently accurate results. The glacier dynamics model is defined by the Stokes system of partial differential equations, an associated constitutive relationship, together with an iceberg calving model, and is solved using the finite-element ELMER/Ice code. The fjord circulation (and submarine melting) model is defined by Boussinesq form of the Navier-Stokes equation set, plus the Holland and Jenkins equations defining the thermodynamic equilibrium at the fjord-glacier front interface and dissolved using the finite-volume MITgcm code. The plume parameterization model that replaces the fjord circulation model in the simplified version of the coupled model is programmed using MATLAB.

This document Final implementation of the observing system: Data delivery and report on results of the observing systems for the Coastal Greenland, describes the final results and future perspectives, including data accessibility, of INTAROS WP3 Task 3.1 for the Coastal Greenland reference site, which is identified as a key location for freshwater output from the Greenland ice sheet to the ocean. The work reported here describes a range of improvements on our monitoring capabilities for the entire journey of the freshwater flux from the Greenland ice sheet, through the fjords and into the ocean, including its impact on the marine ecosystem. Below is a short summary of the results reported by each partner in Task 3.1 of INTAROS. GEUS: Data on snow water equivalent (SWE) successfully retrieved from SnowFox instruments and processed from four sites co-located with PROMICE weather stations, power supply issues were identified, and mitigation measures taken. High-precision vertical and horizontal positional data was successfully retrieved from the new GNSS unit, capable of recording e.g., ice ablation by accurately recording changes in elevation. The deployment successfully tested a range of possible issues and a modified version of the device has already been implemented for landslide monitoring. A rugged, precise and low-power tilt and azimuth sensor was developed and tested in the lab. Field test deployment is ongoing.Corrected rain datasets from the ice sheet have been successfully retrieved and compared to results from regional climate models and reanalysis products. All the demonstrated measurements above will be rolled out for additional PROMICE, GC-Net and GEM weather stations over the coming years and data made openly available through their respective databases. AU: Two years of CTD data so far successfully retrieved from the marine instruments deployed in Aug 2018 and again in 2019, with a third year expected by Aug 2021. It is planned to continue this monitoring as a part of the GEM monitoring programme. SurfacebpCO2and carbonate parameters were observed during two coastal cruises in West Greenland 2016 and East Greenland 2018, respectively, to study the impact of freshening on CO2-uptake of the ocean, yielding 746 observations of the pCO2in the upper 50 m distributed among 120 stations. FMI: Laboratory instrumentation and procedures to characterize the thermal and angular response of pyranometers, to increase the accuracy of the solar irradiance and albedo measurements were successfully applied to CNR1 and CNR4 net-radiometers of the PROMICE network. The method is expected to be applied to similar radiometers of the PROMICE, GC-Net and GEM monitoring networks in the future. UPM: Test flights delivered 200 km of good radar profiles over ice, proving the concept of the new helicopter-borne radar system in the field. The processed radar profiles have successfully yielded bedrock returns in usually difficult glaciological settings near glacier fronts, although partly disrupted by occurrence of meltwater and reflections off nearby nunataks. CNRS-Takuvik: More than 1900 profiles have been acquired so far with unprecedented sets of data with series measured under ice during wintertime. Takuvik intends to continue measuring sea-ice properties in Qikiqtarjuaq and other coastal ecosystems in Baffin Bay. The sensors developed at Takuvik will be integrated to a sea-ice endoscope in development at Université Laval, which will optimize the acquisition of data in situ over a wide range of sea-ice geometries.

The Arctic environment is changing rapidly. A range of observing approaches is being used to increase our understanding of the environment and to mobilize sound decisions in response. To demonstrate ‘real world’ examples of the benefits of cross-weaving data from local and scientific observation systems, we have prepared a series of policy briefs. The key observations and recommendations in the policy briefs are summarized. Through dialogue with civil society organizations, research institutions and the local authorities, we have identified four topics of high priority to local communities where local/citizen-based and scientific observations are important and where recommendations for better-informed decisions and better-documented processes are pertinent: − Local and scientific observations for improving fisheries in Greenland − Natural disasters in Disko Bay, Greenland − Monitoring Svalbard’s environment and cultural heritage by expedition cruises − Natural disasters in Longyearbyen, Svalbard

This document, describes the first implementation and results of use of INTAROS WP3 (Task 3.1) for the Coastal Greenland reference site, which is identified as a key location for freshwater output from the Greenland ice sheet to the ocean. The activities reported here from Task 3.1 describe the first field deployments and results for both offshore, onshore and on-ice instrumentation to monitor identified environmental variables, including: • snow cover on sea ice - for impact of freshening on the marine ecosystem • surface pCO2 and ocean acidification - for impact of freshening on CO2-uptake of the ocean • snow-water equivalent on the ice sheet - for reducing uncertainty in meltwater output to the ocean • precise positioning of ice sheet stations - for calibration for satellite-derived ice velocity maps and numerical weather prediction • new radiometer tilt and azimuth instrument for improved radiation correction – for improving radiometer data corrections • rain gauges on ice sheet stations – for capturing the transition from snow to rain of the precipitation on the Greenland ice sheet • instrument characterization of in-situ ice sheet albedo measurements – for better validation of satellite albedo products • Improvement of ice-penetrating radar system - for generating ice thickness data over ice-sheet outlet glaciers • passive acoustics for characterization of both physical and biological parts of the marine ecosystem – for studying the ice-driven dynamics of Arctic coastal ecosystems • improvement of under-ice monitoring – for observations of spring bloom and bio-optical/-geochemical properties