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Strategic Plan 2004-2010

3. The Scientific Challenge

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To meet SCAR’s mission to be the leading independent organisation for facilitating and coordinating Antarctic research, SCAR’s primary objective is to initiate, develop, and coordinate high quality international scientific research in the Antarctic region, and on the role of the Antarctic region in the Earth system. To meet these goals SCAR will take the following strategic approach:

  1. generate and coordinate innovative high quality international science programmes addressing key issues of global importance;
  2. provide a forum for excellence in Antarctic science, and for debate on the big issues to which Antarctic science can contribute (climate change, ozone hole etc);
  3. promote the establishment of regional and international scientific networks;
  4. encourage multi-disciplinary cooperation in relevant fields;
  5. maintain a high level of collaboration within ICSU and with other international organisations, enhancing and where appropriate developing joint programmes to address specific topics, so as to increase the involvement of the wider scientific community in SCAR’s work.

3.1 Key Scientific Issues

Despite a century of scientific investigation of Antarctica and its surrounding ocean, our knowledge of Antarctic processes and their role in the Earth System is still in its infancy, due in large part to the remoteness of the region and the hostile conditions that prevail there, which make observation difficult. Increasing knowledge of what is there and understanding of why it is so are necessary first steps in being able to develop and apply advanced numerical models of the kind that will enable us to predict with increasing accuracy how the region will change in the future in response to global change, and what the effect of change in Antarctica may be on the rest of the world. SCAR’s strategy for scientific research to raise our understanding of Antarctic processes to a new level is based on the following analysis of key scientific issues.

A pressing scientific and societal requirement is the full understanding of the Earth’s climate system that is needed to underpin accurate forecasts of climate change. This depends in part on understanding Antarctica’s role in the global climate system, which in turn requires comprehensive observation and analysis of the roles of the Antarctic atmosphere, ocean and cryosphere (comprising snow, ice and permafrost) in that system both now and in the past. Antarctica’s crucial role is highlighted by the observation that the many rises and falls of sea-level that have characterised the past few millions of years have been controlled largely by the melting or growth of the Antarctic ice sheet, which locks up 80% of the world’s fresh water. Currently all aspects of the climate system in Antarctic are grossly under-sampled. Yet it is clear that the global warming that is affecting most of the surface of the Earth is affecting at least parts of Antarctica, as can be seen from the break up of ice shelves in West Antarctica recent years. Despite the importance of observations of climate parameters from the region, it is clear from the reports of the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) to the parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change that many more measurements of the atmosphere, ocean and cryosphere are required from the region to provide the basis for accurate forecasts of both regional and global climate change, and indeed for assessments of the state of the climate system such as that which will be provided in 2010 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (see http://www.wmo.ch/web/gcos/gcoshome.html).

The Southern Ocean plays a key role in the global climate system, being the medium through which critical exchanges of heat, salt, carbon, oxygen and nutrients take place between Antarctica and the rest of the world. Along its northern margin, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) – the world’s largest ocean current, with a transport of around 130 million cubic meters per second (four times as much as the Gulf Stream) - acts as a thermal barrier between Antarctica and the tropics and keeps Antarctica cold. Forcing by westerly winds brings to the surface deep water that originated in northern seas, which stimulates high productivity. Water sinking in the ACC carries nutrients north in Antarctic Intermediate Water to influence the biological productivity of the global ocean. At the coast, cold surface waters sink to form the Antarctic Bottom Water that oxygenates the deep global ocean. Knowledge of these processes is now seen as critical to an understanding of global climate.

The Southern Ocean marine ecosystem is a complex product of the interaction of many key aspects of evolutionary history. Knowing how this ecosystem evolved will help to understand evolutionary pathways in many other parts of the world, especially the possible connection between the Antarctic deep-sea benthos and the benthic species in the other deep oceans. The understanding of the Earth’s biodiversity will be incomplete without comprehensive studies of the ways in which plants and animals have adapted to living in the cold environments of the south polar region, where the extreme conditions provide extra selection pressure leading to unique features of biochemistry and biology in endemic species.

Monitoring sea-ice is important not just because it plays a role in the climate system. Annual changes in sea-ice do much to control the extent of biological activity around Antarctica. The crevices and channels in sea ice house a multitude of small organisms, which contribute substantially to Southern Ocean productivity and interact with the pelagic and benthic subsystems.
Deep beneath the ice sheet, water has accumulated over millennia to form more than 100 subglacial lakes, one - Lake Vostok – being the size of Lake Ontario. These lakes may be part of an immense interconnected, hydrological system that has previously gone unrecognized. Although the full extent and the interconnectedness of this major system are not yet fully known, the potential drainage systems identified are as extensive as large continental river basins. These environments are virtually unexplored and unknown. They formed in response to a complex interplay of tectonics, topography, climate and ice sheet flow over millions of years and contain a previously unaccounted reservoir of organic carbon. Sealed from free exchange with the atmosphere for possibly 10 to 35 million years, these lakes may be analogues for the icy domains of Mars and Europa that hold the greatest promise for the presence of life beyond Earth.

Evidence from studies of the overlying ice sheet indicates that unique life supporting ecosystems are likely locked within subglacial lake environments. Such life must have adapted to unique combinations of temperatures, pressures, gases, and carbon and energy sources. These settings may harbor specially adapted organisms and ecosystems. Lake sediments may contain unique records of ice sheet variability over the last few hundred thousand years, which could critically advance our understanding of ice sheet stability.

Much still remains to be learned about the geological history of Antarctica. There is a need to focus geological attention on particular areas that are still largely unknown, like the subglacial highlands of the Gamburtsev Mountains hidden beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. There is no continent on Earth other than Antarctica that has a huge central mountain range for which an explanation in terms of plate tectonics does not exist. How did these features come to be there, and how did they influence the growth of the ice sheet?

Studies like these are essential to understand the history of motion of the Earth’s lithospheric plates, and the tectonic processes taking place in and around Antarctica, which are integral to our understanding of whole Earth evolution. In much the same way, geophysical observatories on Antarctica, such as those engaged in earthquake location, are integral parts of a global network of stations recording Earth properities. That network must be as complete as possible to provide maximum benefit.
Studies of the Antarctic atmosphere are essential for the forecasting of weather conditions, and to understand the chemical processes taking place high in the stratosphere above Antarctica that result in the ozone hole, creating conditions potentially harmful to life in those same areas, and depleting stratospheric ozone levels globally.

Antarctica is one of the best places to study “geospace” the region where the Earth’s atmosphere interacts with the solar wind, a supersonic stream of charged particles emitted from the sun’s corona. Electrons and ions in the solar wind collide with atoms and molecules in the upper atmosphere, causing them to emit photons, forming the aurora australis and heating the upper atmosphere. The interaction of the solar wind with the Earth’s magnetic field also creates a wide range of other effects including geomagnetic storms, disruptions in short-wave radio communications, and power surges in long electricity transmission lines. Important gaps remain in our understanding of the interaction of the solar wind with the Earth’s protective outer layers – the magnetosphere and the ionosphere - especially under extreme solar wind conditions associated with geomagnetic storms and with mass ejections from the sun’s corona. Full understanding of the physics of “geospace” requires coordinated observations in both the Arctic and the Antarctic.

Antarctica is also one of the best places in the world from which to study the cosmos, because the skies above the Antarctic plateau are the coldest, driest and most stable on the Earth. This permits observations of extraordinary sensitivity to be made across the electromagnetic spectrum from the near ultra-violet to the millimetre wavebands. The combination of great sensitivity and clarity of vision makes Antarctic observatories strong candidates for exploring one of the most challenging and exciting frontiers in science, the detection of Earth-like planets in the Galaxy. In addition, conditions are favourable for the construction of telescopes capable of detecting the neutrino emission from individual astrophysical objects. Antarctica is a prime location for the observation of cosmic rays, because proximity to the magnetic pole allows rays of lower energy to penetrate to the ground more readily than at mid-latitude locations.

3.2 The SCAR Scientific Programmes

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Based on the above analysis, SCAR has decided to focus its efforts on a limited number of major Scientific Research Programmes (SRPs) addressing significant topical issues.

To facilitate development of these programmes, and to manage its portfolio of science more effectively, SCAR created in 2002 a new science management structure (Annex 4). Centred on three Standing Scientific Groups (SSGs) on Geosciences, Life Sciences, and Physical Sciences, this structure is intended to ensure appropriate cross-disciplinary awareness and linkages inside and outside the organization. SCAR looks to the SSGs to identify the major scientific challenges of the time.
A Scientific Programme Planning Group will develop a plan for each SRP. Guidelines for Programme development are given in the SCAR Rules of Procedure for Subsidiary Bodies on the SCAR web site (http://www.scar.org). The SRPs are intended, to the extent possible, to be interdisciplinary; to interact with other SCAR research activities; and to have a lifetime of 5-10 years. They should make significant advances in our understanding of how the Antarctic region works, and its role in the global system. SCAR provides SRPs with seed-corn funds to facilitate meetings and workshops needed to develop the Programmes.
Plans for the first set of five programmes were approved by the SCAR National Delegates at their meeting in October 2004. Others will be developed as time goes by.

The five approved Scientific Research Programmes (downloadable from the SCAR web page) are:

For each of these Programmes a brief outline is given in Annex 5 of the purpose, scope and overall objectives. In each case, the scientific objectives will be addressed through a series of projects that together form a comprehensive research programme. Each research project will be defined by its own scientific objectives and requirements for logistics and technology. The timing of individual projects will ultimately be determined by the resources and technologies available and the priorities of the individual national Antarctic programmes through which funding is made available. The projects may not necessarily be sequential and several may be pursued in parallel. However, some later objectives may be dependent on the information, results, and technological advances provided by earlier phases of research.
Although activities in the Antarctic region are nationally funded, the SCAR Scientific Research Programmes are synergistic, and designed to achieve outputs impossible for any one nation on its own. Indeed, the full value of much of this work will be realised only when the various national data sets are combined with those from elsewhere in the world to link the Antarctic firmly into the global system. SCAR’s role is to assist in adding this value.

3.3 Action Groups and Expert Groups

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It is also part of SCAR’s strategy to support a variety of other scientific activities in which value is added to national efforts through international cooperation. These activities, many of which may have a single discipline focus, are managed through sub-groups of the Standing Scientific Groups, including: (i) Action Groups, which address specific matters and will normally complete their activity in 2-4 years; and (ii) Expert Groups, which will address matters on a longer time-scale. Annex 6 illustrates the range of activities carried out by these sub-groups.
The activities cover a wide range of interests. Limitations on the size of SCAR’s core budget means that not all of these can be funded from core funds at the same time. But they are all good cases for investment through the additional externally generated funding that is needed to support a fully comprehensive programme of internationally coordinated scientific research. The extent to which they are funded in fact will therefore depend on the goodwill of specific agencies with high levels of interest in seeing internationally coordinated programmes succeed. The highest priority investments, for core funding, will be listed by the SSGs in the work programme and budget that goes to the biennial Delegates meeting for approval.
From time to time SCAR SSGs will be required to consider new issues, or to maintain a watching brief on particular topics, like bioprospecting and acoustic impacts.
In addition to SCAR’s normal scientific activities, the Delegates meeting in 2004 approved the creation of an Action Group on the History of Antarctic Science.

3.4 The International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-2009

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The period 1 March 2007 to 1 March 2009 has been proposed as an International Polar Year (IPY) to mark the 50th anniversary of the International Geophysical Year (1957-58). SCAR and its scientific community contributed substantially to the development of the IPY Science Plan (http://www.ipy.org/), the key recommendations of which help to set the scene for SCAR science during the period covered by the SCAR Strategic Plan.
SCAR’s Standing Scientific Groups are aligning their activities with the recommendations of the IPY Science Plan to focus on the following six main themes of the IPY:

The SSGs and the SRPs will consider how their activities contribute to the observational initiatives that serve the scientific themes, and which include

  1. a synoptic set of multidisciplinary observations to establish the status of the polar environment in 2007-08;
  2. the acquisition of key data sets necessary to understand factors controlling change in the polar environment;
  3. the establishment of a legacy of multidisciplinary observational networks (which will contribute to the collection of long term data sets called for in section 3.3, above) ;
  4. the launch of internationally coordinated, multidisciplinary expeditions into new scientific frontiers;
  5. the implementation of polar observatories to study important facets of Planet Earth and beyond. Ideally the SRPs will treat the IPY as a Special Observing Period, during which some particular aspect of each SRP will be the focus of attention.

The IPY calls in particular for the establishment of observing systems and observatories that will facilitate the monitoring of long-term environmental processes that exhibit cyclical behaviour on time-scales of a decade or more, and which will therefore be needed long after the IPY has gone. The SCAR SSGs and SRPs have a crucial role to play in the development of the long-term data sets needed by the research community to study such long period phenomena. Establishment of such observing systems during the IPY will leave them behind as an important legacy, and should be seen as an important goal by SCAR’s SRPs. These systems will enable SCAR to contribute more effectively in future to meeting the needs not only of the research community but also of the operational forecasting community that is already observing weather, as part of the World Weather Watch (WWW); the oceans, as part of the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS); and climate, as part of the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS). Their studies confirm that the Antarctic region is distinctly undersampled, and that many more synoptic observations are needed there to improve operational services worldwide. The potential exists to deploy dual-use observing systems that will serve the needs of both the research and operational communities, and in addition to create a network of remote observatories that will perform multiple operations serving different disciplines in a cost-effective way.

To enable SCAR to contribute effectively to the IPY, a SCAR Advisory Committee on the IPY has been created to work in consultation with COMNAP to advise the SCAR Executive Committee and Delegates on the IPY Science and Implementation Plans, and on the potential roles of SCAR in the IPY structure and process, and to monitor the process as it unfolds, advising SCAR on how its contribution to the IPY should develop.

SCAR should work with the IPY community on a major international synthesis event (or events) to wrap up the main results of the IPY, and to point the way forward. The SCAR Open Science Conferences for 2008 and 2010 could be suitable vehicles. Collaborative events should be organized with other agencies active in the Antarctic region, to illustrate the benefits of cooperation.
SCAR should play a primary role in the implementation of the proposed IPY, supporting and, where appropriate, leading the implementation of the Antarctic component of the IPY Science Plan. SCAR should choose an appropriate manner in which to celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2008 during the IPY, including an event during SCAR-XXX.

3.5 Partnerships

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The key to solving the complex environmental problems of today is through partnerships with organisations having complementary skills, technologies and interests. The most important partnership for SCAR is the linkage between science and logistics, which comes about through the close relationship that exists between SCAR and COMNAP. SCAR coordinates its activities with COMNAP through:

  1. annual meetings of the SCAR and COMNAP Executives;
  2. joint meetings of the full memberships of both organisations in even numbered years;
  3. and liaison in the margins of the ATCM meetings.

In the course of carrying out SCAR’s activities, its programme teams and specialist groups are encouraged to form partnerships with other organisations relevant to the achievement of particular objectives. In some cases, SCAR may decide that the relationship with certain partners warrants formal co-sponsorship of an activity; co-sponsorship implies a sharing of responsibility for programme management, and some commitment of resources.
As a constituent body of ICSU, SCAR is called upon to develop strong links with other ICSU environmental bodies. The extent and pattern of these links is substantial. Nevertheless, SCAR’s SSGs should maintain, strengthen and diversify their links with other ICSU bodies.

SCAR plans to carry out in concert with the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) the work of its new Expert Group on Oceanography. The international Antarctic Zone programme (iAnZone) is formally affiliated with both SCOR and the SCAR Oceanography Group.

To strengthen its involvement in climate studies, SCAR has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), to co-sponsor several WCRP activities, including:

  1. the Climate and Cryosphere Programme (CliC);
  2. the Southern Ocean Implementation Panel shared by CliC and the WCRP’s Climate Variability Programme (CLIVAR); and
  3. the International Programme on Antarctic Buoys (IPAB).

Together, SCAR and WCRP (CliC) are cosponsors of a bi-polar Cryosphere Theme developed as a contribution to the Partnership for an Integrated Global Observing Strategy (IGOS), with the goal of tackling the scientific challenges that must be met to understand and forecast the behaviour of the cryosphere. Specific objectives are: to expand the measurements needed to validate satellite data; to ensure comprehensive observations of sea-ice; and to significantly enhance ice-sheet and ice-cap monitoring.

SCAR cosponsors with the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) the Expert Group on “International Trans-Antarctic Scientific Expedition” (ITASE), which aims to collect and interpret a continental-wide array of environmental parameters assembled through the coordinated efforts of scientists from several nations, as the basis for monitoring biogeochemical cycles and local-to-global scale climate change, so as to assess Antarctica's role in and response to environmental and climate change.

Research on the behaviour of the Southern Ocean ecosystem takes place through the Southern Ocean group of IGBP’s Global Ocean Ecosystems Dynamics project (GLOBEC). SCAR is now a co-sponsor of Southern Ocean GLOBEC.

SCAR is co-sponsoring with the Sloan Foundation the Circum-Antarctic (Southern Ocean)element of the global Census of Marine Life (CoML) programme, to provide a multi-national systematic recording of the distribution and abundance of biodiversity in the waters surrounding Antarctica. This will make a direct contribution to SCAR’s EBA programme.

SCAR should participate in programmes addressing carbon fluxes, through co-sponsorship of the relevant activities of the IGBP’s Integrated Marine Biogeochemistry and Ecosystem Research (IMBER) programme, and the International Global Carbon Project.

SCAR recognises that the Antarctic and Arctic science communities have many interests in common, especially in studies related to the cryosphere and to the connections of both regions with the climate system. SCAR will develop closer links with the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) in the future, to improve bi-polar scientific research linkages.

SCAR should support its solar-terrestrial research programme in partnership with IASC and others, to create a framework for improved coordination of research, long-term scientific monitoring, and operational programmes throughout the next solar cycle. Strong links should be maintained with ICSU’s Scientific Committee on Solar-Terrestrial Physics (SCOSTEP), and especially with the overarching program CAWSES (Climate and Weather of the Sun), to facilitate the achievement of excellence by SCAR’s solar-terrestrial physics program.

The IOC’s International Ocean Data and Information Exchange Programme (IODE) has developed the concept of an Ocean Data and Information Network (ODIN), which could be expanded to the Antarctic region. ODINs pull together into a coordinated regional system the National Ocean Data Centres (NODCs) of individual countries. As a contribution to the IPY, the IOC is considering the possible development of a Southern Ocean ODIN. SCAR should work with the IOC in taking this initiative forward.

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