The Call belongs under the Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine and maritime and inland water research and the bioeconomy work programme.

The Arctic Dimension

Proposals are invited under the following topics:

BG-09-2016: An intergrated Arctic Observation System

Expected Impact:
  • Increase temporal and geographic coverage and usefulness of observational data in the Arctic with a view to improving the assessment and prediction capacity of Arctic and planetary changes;
  • Support standardisation and calibration/validation activities, and improve the inter-operability of Arctic observational data;
  • Improve the sustained integration of space-based and in-situ Arctic observations into process models and forecast systems showing benefit to the Copernicus monitoring services;
  • Contribute to the long-term improvement of Arctic observation systems and related services;
  • Integrate with existing pan-Arctic monitoring networks by building additional capacity and adding monitoring parameters to current programmes;
  • Improve the cost-effectiveness of data collection in support of Arctic-related economic and societal activities;
  • Lead to better-informed decisions and better-documented processes within key sectors (e.g. local communities, shipping, tourism, fishing)
  • Support international assessments of global challenges such as climate change, scarcity of natural resources and global scale hazards;
  • Strengthen the societal and economic role of the Arctic region and support the EU strategy for the Arctic and related maritime and environmental policies;
  • Contribute to the GEO Cold Region Initiative and to the Transatlantic Ocean Research Alliance;
  • Contribute to the ongoing and possible future OSPAR actions in Arctic waters;
  • Contribute to the Sustaining Arctic Observation Networks (SAON) process;
  • Contribute to the WMO Programme Year of Polar Prediction (YOPP)
  • Improve the professional skills and competences for those working and being trained to work within this subject area
Type of Action: Research and Innovation action

BG-10-2016: Impact of Arctic changes on the weather and climate of the Northern Hemisphere
Expected Impact:
  • Improve capacity to predict the weather and climate of the Northern Hemisphere, and make it possible to better forecast of extreme weather phenomena;
  • Improve the capacity to respond to the impact of climatic change on the environment and human activities in the Arctic, both in the short and longer term;
  • Improve the capacity of climate models to represent Arctic warming and its impact on regional and global atmospheric and oceanic circulation;
  • Improve the uptake of measurements from satellites by making use
    of new Earth observation assets;
  • Lead to optimised observation systems for various modelling applications;
  • Contribute to a robust and reliable forecasting framework that can help meteorological and climate services to deliver better predictions, including at sub-seasonal and seasonal time scales;
  • Improve stakeholders’ capacity to adapt to climate change;
  • Contribute to better servicing the economic sectors that rely on improved forecasting capacity (e.g. shipping, mining);
  • Contribute to the Year of Polar Prediction (YOPP) and IPCC scientific assessments, and to the Copernicus Climate Change (C3S) services;
  • Improve the professional skills and competences for those working and being trained to work within this subject area.

Type of Action: Research and Innovation action.