Scientific Relevance

The polar oceans are potentially the most vulnerable to present and future global environmental changes on our planet, where small shifts may trigger unknown and irreversible responses affecting the whole ecosystem. Compared to the other areas on Earth, the available figures show that polar regions will face some of the most dramatic changes, such as unprecedented rise in temperatures.

But even the most sophisticated modelling forecasts, for example the IPCC 4th Assessment Report, are limited by insufficient data coverage at high latitudes. Research in the polar regions therefore plays a decisive role in predicting future climate changes and in developing and applying mitigation and adaptation measures for high latitude environments.

Understanding polar natural variability demands an extensive and profound knowledge of the processes involved. To gain this insight, natural paleo-environmental archives such as sediment cores from the deep sea floor must be retrieved and analysed. In spite of its critical role in climate control, the long-term environmental history and tectonic structure of the Arctic Ocean is poorly documented. This lack of data represents one of the largest gaps of information in morern Earth science. In addition, there is also lack of information on natural physical or biological variability of the oceans or long-term shifts in the ecosystems, all due due to the extreme technical and logistical efforts involved to operate in the extreme weather and ice environments.

AURORA BOREALIS, designed to perform year-round missions independent of weather conditions, will fill the data void.

The AURORA BOREALIS project addresses two scientific communities which partly overlap but which also have different interests. The first one is the general polar science community that needs a vessel for conducting its field and sea work throughout all seasons of the year, hence with broad scientific perspectives. The other is the deep sea drilling community, which would use the ship mainly during the summer months to study the structure and properties of the oceanic crust, the history of paleoclimate development and oceanic depositional environments that can be deduced from the ocean floor sediment cover.

The unique year-round operational capacity will allow crucial new process-oriented studies of polar regions. General polar science research topics include:

• Climate variability: scales and indicators of polar climate change to forecast future threats and scenarios
• State and stability of the cryosphere, i.e. changing biodiversity and ecosystems in polar environments. Integrated real-time ice-ocean-atmosphere-hydrosphere observations and forecasting for users and inhabitants of polar regions. For studies in marine biology at high latitudes, AURORA BOREALIS with state-of-the-art sampling equipment will allow the installation of long-term observatories at key locations in the ice-covered Arctic Ocean. Such long-term data is urgently needed to evaluate the actual status of the Arctic ecosystem and to develop prognostic models about its future development.
  

The advanced scientific drilling capability turns AURORA BOREALIS into an extremely useful platform for scientific deep-sea drilling in regions inaccessible by conventional drilling ships. The drilling missions will focus on:

• Reconstruction of past climatic variability including extreme events. Unravelling the tectonic and geodynamic history of the Arctic and Antarctic Ocean basins. Reconstruction of the long-term history of Antarctic ice sheets and the transition from a distant 'greenhouse' into the current 'icehouse' world
• Assess the nature and stability of the submarine permafrost environment, evaluating the potential de-stabilisation of continental margins and releases of gas hydrates into the hydro- and atmosphere
• Long-term geophysical monitoring of boreholes and the surrounding environment with observatories and instruments
• Access the deep biosphere beneath the sea floor and study life in extreme environments below permanently ice-covered ocean basins.

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