Press release: 28 October 2016, New projects to understand the Arctic region and its climate extremes
The European Commission is providing almost EUR 31 million for three new Arctic Blue Growth research projects.
Media contact details: Communication leader Hannah Grist: Hannah.Grist@srsl.com or Chiara Bearzotti, Blue-Action project manager, E: chb@dmi.dk Twitter: @BG10Blueaction
Quarterly newsletter
The newsletter is related to the contents of the projects, publications, and results achieved. It targets the partners of the Blue-Action consortium. Two useful links here for you:
- Have you missed our last newsletter? You can browse the list of the
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An open invitation for collaboration with DMI on pioneering Arctic research
The video is an open invitation for Arctic research collaboration. The video was launched at AGU in 2017.
AGU TV 2017, produced by WebsEdge/Education is covering the AGU Fall Meeting, the largest and preeminent Earth and space meeting in the world. 11-15 December 2017 in New Orleans.
Total time 5:18 minutes 
on YouTube
16 January 2018 Press release "Scientists and stakeholders anticipate alternative futures for remote Russian Arctic region"
On December 8, 2017, Vladimir Putin visited the remote Yamal Peninsula Western Siberia to celebrate the launch of the extensive international Yamal liquefied natural gas (LNG) project. At the same time, a group of Russian and international scientists and stakeholders from science, media, non-governmental organizations and indigenous groups gathered in Moscow to discuss the development prospects of the same region, the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, as part of the “Yamal 2040” workshop series... >>
Read more in the press release (PDF)
15 October 2017 Arctic Climate Services – Sessions summary of the discussion chaired by Climate-KIC at Arctic Circle
On the 15 October 2017 Climate-KIC chaired a discussion on fostering innovation in climate technologies and infrastructure at this year’s Arctic Circle event in Reykjavik, Iceland.
Read more in the session summary: PDF document
Project factsheet (May 2017): Download (PDF)
Project flyer (2017): Download (PDF)
Project introductory presentation (2017): Download (PDF) and PowerPoint
Logo of the project in colours, b/w and in different resolutions and formats: Zipped file
28 April 2017 The Obukhov Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences awarded Russian funding for mirrowing Blue-Action proposal!
Partner Obukhov Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences (IAP RAS), represented by the PI Vladimir Semenov, has been awarded Russian funding by the Russian Ministry of Education and Science for taking part in the Blue-Action activities.
IAP RAS will in particularly contribute to the following:
- Impact of rapidly warming Arctic and decreasing sea ice extent on atmosphere circulation in high- and mid-latitudes including related extreme events.
- Future scenarios of greenhouse gases’ emissions from the North Eurasia and methane emissions from the North Eurasian shelf.
- Quantifying relative roles of internal climate variability and external forcing in the Arctic climate changes on different time scales, identifying climate feedbacks responsible for amplified climate change in the Arctic.
IAP RAS will be actively involved in:
-WP3: WP3 Linkages of Arctic climate changes to lower latitudes (Yongqi Gao/NERSC, Co-lead: Guillaume Gastineau/LOCEAN)-WP8 Communication, dissemination, engagement and exploitation (Lead: Raeanne Miller/SRSL, co-lead; Peter Normann Vangsbo Climate-KIC)
More information: please contact 
Vladimir Semenov (IAP RAS)
17 March 2017 Alain Juppé visiting EPOC labs "Ces labos sont des pépites!"
Alain Juppé, former prime Minister of France, mayor of Bordeaux, visited EPOC, our partner, and got briefed about our project by Didier Swingedouw. More info about Juppé's visit in the French media: Article in French only!
3 April 2017 Blue-Action on Zenodo
We are in the process of uploading presentations and reports in Zenodo, to grant open access to full materials in our project. Have a look at the Blue-Action community: https://zenodo.org/communities/blue-actionh2020
The Maritime Executive on WOC participation in Blue-Action, 19 January 2017
WOC joins Blue-Action project
The World Ocean Council (WOC) has been selected as the only international business organization to participate in the European project Blue-Action. Read the full article
#Storify of #BlueAction in Berlin, January 2017
Curious to know how did the kickoff meeting go?
20 January 2017 High North News interviews Kathrin Keil (IASS) on Warming Arctic - Extreme Events
High North News interviews Kathrin Keil, Blue-Action WP5 co-leader on the warming Arctic, extreme events, joining multi-disciplinary forces and the importance of climate services Read the full article
Press release 19 Jan 2017: WOC Partners in Research on Impact of Arctic Changes
This press-release was launched at the opening of the first meeting of Blue-Action: read the full version of the WOC press release
Press release: 12 December 2016, Climate-KIC, Blue-action’ to help society cope with the impacts of dramatic Arctic climate changes
The Blue-Action project will seek to reach out to the private sector decision makers and actively engage with them to enhance response capacity to climate change challenges and foster transfer and use of project results via Climate-KIC, which will in turn boost economic growth. Climate-KIC is responsible for the Work Package 8 and will be in charge of communication and dissemination to a broad European business community including shipping, oil and gas, fisheries, aquaculture, tourism, renewable energy (wind, wave, tidal), ports, dredging, cables and pipelines, carbon capture and storage, as well as the maritime legal, financial and insurance communities Read the full version of the CKIC press release
Photo: courtesy of Climate-KIC
Press release: 1 December 2016: Scientists take "blue-action" to help society cope with the impacts of dramatic Arctic climate changes
While the Arctic faces rapid warming and less sea ice currently covers the Arctic Ocean than ever before at this time of the year, an international partnership launches a major project to improve our detailed understanding of the processes and impacts of this changing climate and to construct better long-term forecast systems for the increasingly extreme weather of the Arctic and the wider northern hemisphere.
Blue-Action is a four-year research and innovations project funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme with €7.5 million investment. It brings together 116 experts from 40 organisations in 17 countries on three continents working in academia, local authorities and maritime industries.
Pooling their expertise, skills, approaches and networks, the partners aim to improve how we describe, model and predict the weather and climate on seasonal to decadal time scales in the Arctic and over the northern hemisphere. This information will allow communities and businesses in Eurasia and North America to develop and plan their activities better.
“We will deliver this by synthesizing observations, assessing model performance, conducting coordinated multi-model sensitivity experiments, reducing and evaluating the uncertainty in prediction systems and developing new initialization techniques” explains Dr Daniela Matei from the Max-Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, one of two coordinators of the project.
“Working directly with local communities, businesses operating in the Arctic and industrial organisations, Blue-Action will demonstrate new opportunities for growth through tailored climate services. These will give users the information they need to live and work safely and successfully in the rapidly changing regions in and surrounding the Arctic” says project coordinator Dr Steffen M Olsen from the Danish Meteorological Institute in Copenhagen.
“We are starting today to reach out to the many communities and businesses in the far north to work with us to guide our research direction and to co-develop adaptation mechanisms that will allow them to not only sustain but to boost their performance,” says Steffen Olsen.
“We will collaborate with other modelling and observational climate projects funded within the JPI-Climate Belmont-Forum, EU-H2020 frameworks to maximise the synergy and efficiency of our research efforts,” adds Dr Matei.
While the project begins its work on 1st December 2016, the Blue-Action kick-off meeting will be held 18-20 January 2017 at the Max Planck Society’s Harnack-Haus in Berlin.
Read the full press release: 
Blue-Action
Photo: courtesy of Dirk Notz, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology
The projects involve 85 organisations from a total of 22 countries with a high number of international partners including the US, Canada, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea. The main goal is to better understand the Arctic area and how it is influencing climate change. Optimising observation systems, designing tools to collect and integrate relevant data, and developing innovative approaches to predict weather and climate extremes are some of the objectives.
- The INTAROS project will develop an integrated Arctic Observation System (iAOS) by extending, improving and unifying existing systems in the different regions of the Arctic. The iAOS will enable better-informed decisions and better-documented processes within key sectors e.g. local communities, shipping, tourism, fishing, in order to strengthen the societal and economic role of the Arctic region and support the EU strategy for the Arctic and related maritime and environmental policies. INTAROS should develop cooperation with the AtlantOS project.
- The APPLICATE and Blue-Action projects will address the increasing need for reliable weather and climate predictions, in the Arctic and the effect on European climate. Both project will enhance the predictive capacity of the current models and identify gaps in the current monitoring systems: while APPLICATE focusses on assessment of climate processes and the relevance of high resolution modelling; Blue-Action will develop innovative statistical and dynamical approaches to predict weather and climate extremes and a few prototypes of climate services in collaboration with local community and stakeholders.
The three projects contribute to the implementation of the Trans-Atlantic Ocean Research Alliance and to the EU's Blue Growth Agenda and its long term strategy to support sustainable growth in the marine and maritime sectors as a whole.
About
Transatlantic Ocean Research Alliance
EU Blue Growth Agenda
Policy topics - The Arctic & Climate change
Read the full press release
ec.europa.eu/easme/en/news/new-projects-understand-arctic-region-and-its-climate-extremes
5 November 2016 Arctic Resilience Report published
The Arctic Resilience Report was published on 25 November 2016: "Environmental, ecological, and social changes are happening faster than ever in the Arctic, and are accelerating. They are also more extreme, well beyond what has been seen before. This means the integrity of Arctic ecosystems is increasingly challenged, threatening the sustainability of current ways of life in the Arctic and likely disruption of global climate and ecosystems."
Watch the recording of the launch event "What is at stake in the Arctic?"
Download the Report
