Declaration from the DAMOCLES symposium in Brussels 2009
The scientists attending the symposium have worked out a declaration summarizing the key findings from the project, as well as future projections and scenarios.
The scientific coordinator of DAMOCLES, Jean-Claude Gascard, presented a declaration on behalf of the symposium. Photo: Erlend Hermansen
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More than 150 scientists attended the international symposium “The Arctic climate system, its present status, future evolution and potential impacts”.
Two important outcomes of the symposium are a declaration and a conference statement incorporating results and perspectives from a large number of people and scientific disciplines. The declaration is building on the conference statement.
“We have achieved major accomplishments in all scientific fields of the project and the confernce statement sum up the most important developments, observations and findings during the project period”, said Jean Claude Gascard, scientific coordinator of DAMOCLES.
During the last 100 years, the Arctic atmosphere has warmed almost twice as fast as the global average. The sea-ice cover has rapidly decreased and thinned during at least three decades. The process is accelerating because the amount of heat required to melt the remaining ice is reduced and moderate changes in heat flux from the ocean and the atmosphere can have large impacts on the Arctic ice cover.
The September 2007 sea-ice extent was an all-time record minimum, and September 2008 and 2009 had the second and third lowest summer ice extents ever observed. Projections show that it might completely disappear in summer by the end of this century with large potential consequences for ecology and humans.
The scientists are deeply concerned that the most recent CO2 emission estimates, are even higher than the most extreme IPCC-AR4 release scenario. Unless emissions are curbed significantly, a stabilisation of the Arctic's climate system will be unlikely.
The scientists in DAMOCLES achieved for the first time a systemic approach in integrating atmosphere physics (including solar radiation), glaciology (sea-ice) and oceanography in order to observe, understand and to quantify climate change in the Arctic. The project is Europe's flagship in the field of Arctic and climate research, and a major contributor to the International Polar Year. 46 institutions and 12 countries are involved, and the consortium is performing a remarkable research effort.
DAMOCLES started in 2005, and will end in June 2010.
“It is very important that the research effort of DAMOCLES is followed up, and that Arctic research is maintained in the future as well”, said Gascard.
Press contacts:
DAMOCLES: Laetitia Nitkiewicz, laetitia.nitkiewicz@locean-ipsl.upmc.fr , Tel: +33 144 27 84 52
European Commission: Florian Frank, florian.frank@ec.europa.eu , Tel: + 32 2 29 97934
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