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SCAR Bulletin No 135, October 1999

1996-98 Report Of The Scar Global Change Programme Office

Background On Office Activities

The Programme Office has experienced an annually increasing workload. In 1995-96 the activities of the office and the Programme Coordinator were focused on the identification and establishment of international global change programmes in the Antarctic, and the preparation of science plans and outlines. This work required extensive liaison between Antarctic scientists and with other international programmes such as IGBP, WCRP and SCOR. Since late 1996, the office activities have been focused more on the publication of Science and Implementation Plans for ITASE, ASPeCt and ANTIME, the implementation of the scientific programmes, and scientific support through the identification of key datasets and the establishment of some metadata and datasets.

Staff

The programme office was staffed during 1997/98 by Dr Ian Goodwin, Programme Coordinator; Ms Miranda Carver, Administration and Information Officer until her resignation on 31 January 1998. Wendy Regester-Young replaced Ms Carver as Administration and Information Officer on 10 March 1998.

Scientific And Organisational Meetings And Workshops Attended By The Programme Coordinator Since 1996

Since August 1996, the Programme Coordinator has attended the following major activities and meetings, where he has given oral and poster presentations:

GLOCHANT ISMASS Scientific Steering Committee meeting on 'Planning fieldwork and remote sensing of mass balance
estimates', held in Cambridge, UK, 23-24 October 1996.

BEDMAP Workshop, held in Cambridge, UK, 21-22 October 1996.

IGBP Core Project Officers meeting, Canberra, Australia, 21-22 October, 1996

IGBP PAGES Scientific Steering Committee meeting, Stellenbosch, South Africa, 12-15 March, 1997.

First ANTIME Workshop, Hobart, 6-11 July 1997.

GLOCHANT V Group of Specialists meeting, Hobart, 11-12 July, 1998.

Symposium on Antarctic and Global Change: Interactions and Impacts, Hobart, 13-18 July 1997.

Third SPREP Climate Change and Sea Level Rise Conference, Noumea, New Caledonia, 18-22 August 1997.

SCAR WG Geodesy and Geographic Information, Antarctic Spatial Data Infrastructure Project meeting, Hobart, October 1997.

IGBP PAGES Leaders meeting, Hilterfingen, Switzerland, 8-9 November 1997.

START OCEANIA Planning Meeting, Canberra, Australia, 21-23 January 1998.

IGBP PAGES 2^nd Workshop on Global Paleoenvironmental Data, Boulder, Colorado, USA, 9-12 February 1998.

GLOCHANT VI Group of Specialists meeting, Cambridge, UK, 16-18 April 1998.

IGBP PAGES Open Science Meeting, London, UK, 20-23 April 1998.

Note: that attendance at IGBP PAGES meetings was partly funded by PAGES.

Communications With Global Change Scientists
Antarctic Global Change Research Newsletter

The second and third issues of the Antarctic Global Change Newsletter were produced and circulated in November, 1996 and 1997 respectively. The newsletters are edited by the Programme Coordinator. They are both 20 page two-colour A4 newsletters and are also available on the SCAR Global Change Programme's World Wide Web home page (see below). It was originally intended to produce the newsletter at least twice a year, However, there continues to be a paucity of submitted material, and an annual newsletter will be produced for the next two years. The circulation was approximately 400 and the mailing list has been revised and increased to 500 during early 1998. The circulation is not sufficient to reach the whole Antarctic global change science community. The Group of Specialists is reviewing the mailing list and assisting the office in revising the list to reach a wider audience. The Group of Specialists has also been requested to take an active role in soliciting articles and information for the newsletter. The publication of the newsletter is funded by SCAR.

PAGES and IGBP Newsletters

The programme coordinator prepared an article "Global Change and the Antarctic - an overview of the SCAR GLOCHANT programme" for the IGBP newsletter, 29, 13-14. Also the IGBP PAGES Newsletter, vol 5 No 3 featured PAGES in the Antarctic, which comprised articles on ANTIME, ITASE and PICE, which were prepared by the Programme Office. The feature gave excellent exposure of these co-sponsored GLOCHANT activities, and there was considerable follow-up interest in the programme. It appears that the PAGES mailing list includes many Antarctic or related researchers who are not currently on the GLOCHANT mailing list. We are rectifying this by cross correlating the two mailing lists.

EASIZ Newsletter

During 1996-98 the Programme Office has desk-top published the second issue of the EASIZ newsletter. The newsletter was edited by Professor Andrew Clarke at the British Antarctic Survey.

World Wide Web Site

The World Wide Web site for the SCAR Global Change Programme, has been completely revised. The URL remains the same as before (http://www.antcrc.utas.edu.au/scar/). The web site is structured around the themes of Southern Ocean, Sea Ice, Continent and Sea Level. It is anticipated that these WWW pages will serve as an increasingly effective method for communication and exchange of global change data amongst SCAR and other international scientists. The establishment of the Southern Ocean web pages has formed an important first step in improved coordination of Southern Ocean research with SCOR, IGBP and WCRP projects.

International Symposium on Antarctica and Global Change, Hobart, 1997

The Programme Office played an important role both in the organisation and scientific programming of the International Symposium on Antarctica and Global Change, which was sponsored by the Antarctic CRC and GLOCHANT. Ian Goodwin was also a Scientific Editor of the Proceedings of the Antarctica and Global Change Symposium, to be published as Annals of Glaciology, Vol. 27.

Additional Workshop and Editorial Activities

The office has also organised a number of scientific steering committee meetings for GLOCHANT programmes and organised the First ANTIME workshop, held in July 1997, edited and published the workshop abstracts volume. In addition an ANTIME Special Issue of Antarctic Science will be published in September, 1998. The issue is co-edited by Ian Goodwin and Carol Pudsey (BAS), and contains 10 papers spanning onshore and offshore studies that were developed from presentations and discussions at the Hobart workshop.

In 1997 Ian Goodwin was also appointed Associate Editor of the journal The Holocene.

Programme Data Synthesis

The success of the overall GLOCHANT programme largely rests on establishing a clear process for the integration of multi-disciplinary data, which will enable a synthesis of modern and past environmental, climatic and ecological variability. It is proposed that the identification of priority global change-related data, and support for its integration and synthesis should be a major function of the Programme Office.

The recommendations from the Fifth GLOCHANT meeting in Hobart were sent to the SCAR Executive Committee for their consideration at its Cape Town meeting. Some of these recommendations caused concern for the Executive, particularly those relating to some of the functions of the Programme Office and to GLOCHANT's intended participation in global change data synthesis and management. The Executive expressed the view that the Programme Office did not have the role of establishing scientific databases within its terms of reference. The Group of Specialists responded by outlining that the main role of the programme office is in scientific support which involved data synthesis and the establishment of project oriented databases.

The Group of Specialists and the programme Scientific Steering Committees, with support from the programme office, have a major role in defining the type and source of data required to answer key scientific questions. Scientific data synthesis is not a function normally performed by the Antarctic Data Centres. The membership of the Group of Specialists includes the chairman of JCADM, who has advised both GLOCHANT and the Programme Office on the most appropriate involvement for GLOCHANT in data management. Several of the global change activities have identified existing data sources that would make major contributions to fulfilling their objectives. These data are not presently either accessible at a single source, nor are they in a usable format if they were. As a programme-oriented organisation the GLOCHANT office is in a position to gather programme specific data from programme SSC members or from their nominated representatives; and it has the capacity to interpret the data in terms of the programme objectives.

As an initial project, the programme office has recently completed the first stage of the ITASE ice core data compilation project. This project involved the development of a metadata directory and maps of ice core sites and measured parameters. This was carried out in conjunction with the preparation of the ITASE Science and Implementation Plan. There is a large data rescue and re-interpretation component of ITASE which will involve the Programme Office. Similarly, ANTIME and ASPeCt are developing to a stage where the office will be involved in the identification of priority data sets and in data synthesis. In the case of ASPeCt, for many years Soviet vessels operated in the Antarctic sea ice zone at times of year that most other nations did not and kept meticulous sea ice observations, but in a format that was essentially qualitative. The ASPeCt group has shown that it is possible to recode these observations in terms of the quantitative ASPeCt ship-based observation protocols, thus providing a near-uniform record of sea ice characteristics extending back to at least the 1960s. Other programmes potentially have national data sets which, when combined, will form key data sets for circum-Antarctic scientific analysis .

It is the interpretation and utilisation of these types of data to which the GLOCHANT programme is focused. Output from the GLOCHANT programme activities forms an additional source of data to the AMD and designated World Data Centres. These activities are not new and XXIV SCAR has previously given approval for the Programme Office to carry out the ITASE data compilation project, and allocated a budget for that task.

IGBP is now entering a phase where the multidisciplinary synthesis of global change, processes, interactions and impacts is the primary focus. GLOCHANT will take an active role in this synthesis by contributing the results of regional studies, and a synthesis of global change in the Antarctic and Southern Ocean. The Programme Office will be required to take an active role in this data synthesis with the scientific community. Its role will include the coordination of the analysis and exchange of Antarctic global change data with the IGBP, WCRP and SCOR core projects, such as JGOFS, GLOBEC, PAGES, CLIVAR and ACSYS. The coordination and exchange of global change data between regions is encouraged by both START and IGBP, and is a most appropriate function for GLOCHANT in its role as the START Regional Research Committee for the Antarctic.

The role of the Programme Office as a Scientific Project Office needs to be recognised and endorsed by Delegates at XXV SCAR in Concepción, Chile. This is the subject of a formal recommendation to SCAR, listed in the GLOCHANT Report to XXV SCAR.

Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research

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