ClicOpen, Doris Abele, Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research

Introduction

The ClicOPEN project investigates the response of coastal systems to ongoing climate change in four different areas of the Antarctic Peninsula.
The Antarctic Peninsula is one of the Earth’s three most rapidly warming regions: most of the glaciers there are in retreat and large ice shelves have broken up. This project investigates the impact of these changes on the plants and animals that live on the land, the shore and coastal sea around the Antarctic Peninsula. Organisms are facing a barrage of complex effects including warming, decreased ice and snow cover, increased iceberg grounding, sedimentation and freshening.

Q&A

1. What research will you be doing during IPY?

ClicOPEN conducts high-resolution climate change research within the coastal ecosystems at the Western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP). This region is now experiencing rapid warming with mean air temperature increased by 2.5°C over the past 50 years. The program encourages interdisciplinary projects along a North South gradient on WAP, using European, South American, Korean and U.S. field stations as research platforms. My own interest in the frames of clicOPEN is to investigate response to stress in Antarctic fish and mollusc invertebrates. In my group at the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) in Bremerhaven we examine stress tolerance and stress signals in polar marine invertebrates and fish. In cooperation with Finish and Swiss colleagues, we study the hypoxic stress response in cells of marine ectotherms.

2. What are the major challenges you are going to face?

The major challenge as a clicOPEN coordinator is to create the platforms for communication and catalyze real active cooperation between groups and stations. For all of us it meant to invest a lot of time, energy and brains to start the initiative. As the participants span from Punta Arenas to St Petersburg, from Salamanca to Seoul we cannot easily bring people together in a physical sense, so much has to be dealt with via internet. Funding for IPY is rather lagging behind so that in many cases it is not easy to win a sustained interest especially from the established “Antarctic nations”.  Special difficulties arise also because of national IPY funding possibilities are all but predictable or coordinated. Thus, multi-national projects are planned in clicOPEN and then important players run the risk not get funded. It would have been great if IPY funding would have been more internationalized, specifically by the EU.

3. What do you hope to learn from this project and why is this important?

We will learn how air warming affects glaciers and what physical changes it brings for land and ocean surfaces at the Antarctic Peninsula. Further, we will learn how changes in both systems intertwine in the marine-terrestrial interface (the coast) and whether changes in both compartments are mutually accelerating or not.

5. What are the potential implications/applications of the results?

We will start an open-access data base and describe the status quo of ecosystem functioning at the Antarctic Peninsula and we will establish a networking programme for future joint research in the area involving 16 different countries and scientists that share platforms, tools and expertise. We will also intensify and inter-calibrate environmental monitoring along WAP coast and produce new research tools. We will build up educational networks for young scientists and students, and facilitate transfer of expertise between working groups and countries.  We will increase scientific efficiency through joint use of cost-intensive research tools (e.g. fishing boats, ROVs) and through cross sampling between projects and research stations.

6. Why do you think IPY is important?

It is important to increase public awareness of the relevance of both polar regions for our planet, both in an economical as in a more general sense. Climate change is going on and both regions with most rapid warming trends in the past 50 years lie within the polar circles. It is important to realize how much the polar systems impact our global climate, but also how our human activities endanger these areas and their ecosystems, and what it means for the earth systems when ice shields and glaciers collapse at the remote ends of the world.

7. Why should European societies care about the Polar Regions or IPY (eg climate change)?

Each of the Polar Regions contributes 0.2 mm y-1 to global sea level rise (3 mm y-1 total) which has dramatic consequences for earth population including Europe. Specifically Antarctic: Several European countries maintain research stations at the Antarctic Peninsula to document their scientific engagement and justify economic interests in the area (geological and fishery resources and polar tourism).

8. What are the major challenges for Europe in terms of dealing with the issues of the Polar Regions?

If we could convince the German car industry to realize that the big deal is to lower climate gas emission, install particle filters and accept speed limits on the autobahn we would have come very far.  Europe could take a leading role in the world with respect to sustainable energy policy. We have the credibility, so lets make use of it.

9 Are there any myths or misconceptions about the Polar Regions that you want to dispel?

I think that the Polar Regions are generally considered as so remote, uninhabitable and extreme environments. That life there is complicated and the extreme low temperatures exert a stress on the creatures struggling to survive there. Why this is certainly mostly true for humans, it is not so for most Antarctic animals/organisms. Contrary, these animals are highly adapted and warming poses many problems for them. The Antarctic with its constant climate, low variability is a low stress environment for most of its inhabitants. Now we are changing the climate and make it less predictable and that creates a problem for the organisms adapted to life in Antarctica. We have to realize that the way we handle energy in Europe impinges on these seemingly remote ecosystems.