Kinnvika - Arctic warming and impact research

Kinnvika is a project within the International Polar Year 2007–2008 initiative that focuses on Arctic warming and impact research.

Kinnvika is a logistic platform for scientists to manage research, with a base at the old Kinnvika station in Svalbard, but also to coordinate individual research initiatives into a larger scientific framework. The project is today represented by more than 50 scientists from more than ten countries. The science involves several disciplines in the Earth Sciences, but Human Sciences are also represented.

The general scientific objective focuses on Arctic warming and on this fairly unexplored part of the Arctic. Global change has the largest effect in the high Arctic due to the larger excess energy expected, and the northernmost areas will be the area’s first to show signs of change and stress on the cryosphere and of the ecotone. This makes climate change and impact research the highest priority for Kinnvika.

Svalbard and Arctic change

Regional modelling of the future of the Arctic predicts that the average warming over the High Arctic will probably be in the range of 5–7°C during this century. With the projected large warming of the Arctic, areas closer to the advection pathways transporting heat will initially be worse affected than areas that are more isolated from exchange of heat. Svalbard is such a sensitive area, due to the proximity to the North Atlantic Drift, and may be expected to show large changes with future warming. Since Svalbard is the northernmost land in the European sector of the Arctic, and Nordaustlandet is the northernmost large terrain in Svalbard, changes taking effect here will most likely propagate southwards, both as physical processes and as economic and political consequences for our societies, making this an issue that needs to be taken seriously by the Nordic countries. Important scientific questions focus on:

Because of its position the island of Nordaustlandet is climatically more affected by Arctic air and therefore more extreme than the other parts of Svalbard. It has been chosen as the study site for several reasons:

Research focus in this area will significantly advance our understanding of past, present and future environmental changes in the North Atlantic and Arctic regions. The relatively small human footprint in the area is another important reason for conducting an IPY project on Nordaustlandet.

The research will be carried out during six research expeditions to Kinnvika during the spring and summer seasons of 2007–2009.

Timetable

• SWEDARCTIC
• Arctic Sweden
• ASCOS
• Kinnvika
• ISSS-08
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