2002 ARCSS All-Hands Workshop

Ocean-Atmosphere-Ice Interactions (OAII)

Jane M Hawkey¹, Louis A. Codispoti^2
1University of Maryland Center for Environmental Sciences, OAII Science Management Office, PO Box 775, Cambridge, MD, 21613, USA, Phone 410-221-8416, Fax 410-221-8390, hawkey@hpl.umces.edu
²University of Maryland Center for Environmental Sciences, OAII Science Management Office, PO Box 775, Cambridge, MD, 21613, USA, Phone 410-221-8479, Fax 410-221-8390, codispot@hpl.umces.edu

Ocean-Atmosphere-Ice Interactions (OAII) is a component of ARCSS and was established in 1991. Since its inception, the thrust of OAII has been to investigate the arctic marine environment in the context of global change and the overall goals of ARCSS.

That the Arctic is highly sensitive to, and has an impact on, global climate out of all proportion to the relatively small portion of global area that it occupies, is a proposition that is easy to justify. Obtaining appropriate data from the Arctic marine environment, however, can be costly and difficult. These factors plus the interdisciplinary thrust of the ARCSS program reguire a significant degree of planning, consensus building and project development. The OAII Science Steering Committee (SSC) and Science Management Office (SMO) exist in order to assist with these activities.

So far, the OAII component of ARCSS has involved more than one hundred principal investigators, and several major research projects including the ongoing Surface Heat Budget of the Arctic Ocean (SHEBA) and the Western Arctic Shelf-Basin Interactions (SBI) projects. The OAII SSC and SMO have also been instrumental in nuturing the trans-ARCSS Study of Environmental Change (SEARCH) initiative.

Return to Abstracts page.