Melbourne (Australia) meeting, 5-7 July 20011
The AGCS is a research programme of the SCAR - Standing Scientific Group (SSG) – Physical Science (PS). The main objective of this programme is to investigate the interaction of the Antarctic atmospheric and oceanic climate and the rest of the earth system on a decadal time scale. The group started its work on 2004, when it was approved by the SCAR executive committee with a 4 year work plan and later extended for 4 years more.
During the last IUGG General Assembly in Melbourne, Australia, a meeting of the AGCS was held to talk about the advances on the research and the future of the research programme, since the present research group is arriving to its end in 2012.
The AGCS assessed 4 major scientific themes to be proprietary investigated, these were:
Theme 1. Decadal time scale variability in the Antarctic climate system, which will investigate ocean-atmosphere coupling, the role played by radiative processes and the role of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation in modulating the Antarctic climate.
Theme 2. Global and regional climate signals in ice cores to establish better quantitative relationships between ice core data and measures of tropical, mid- and high latitude climate variability.
Theme 3. Natural and anthropogenic forcing on the Antarctic climate system, including the production of regional-scale estimates of expected climate change over Antarctica during the next 100 years.
Theme 4. The export of Antarctic climate signals, to examine the means by which climate changes in the Antarctic can influence conditions at more northerly latitudes.
Several fields and countries were represented at the meeting, the list of representative was as follow:
Andrew Lenton (CSIRO, Tasmania/Australia), Azizan Abu Samah (Univ. of Malaya, Malaysia), Andy Hogg (Australian National University), Nancy Bertler (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand), Peter Convey (British Antarctic Survey, UK), Jo Jacka (International Glaciological Society UK), Jan Strugnell (La Trobe University, Australia), Paul Mayewski (University of Maine, USA), Alberto Garabato (National Oceanography Centre, UK), Siobhan O'Farrell(CSIRO, Australia), Steve Rintoul (CSIRO, Australia), John Turner ( British Antarctic Survey, UK), Roland Warner (Australian Antarctic Division), Tony Worby (Australian Antarctic Division), Tas van Ommen (Australian Antarctic Division), Hans Oerter (Alfred Wegener Institute, Germany) Cunde Xiao (Chinese Meteorological Administration, Beijing) and Francisco Fernandoy (Alfred Wegener Institute / APECS representative).
During the meeting the some of the major results of the group were exposed and discussed like the advances and achievements of/on the International Trans-Antarctic Scientific Expedition (ITASE), modeling of sea ice and ice sheets, atmospheric changes detected during the instrumental period, tropical links, observation of the ocean, among others.
Finally the AGCS group decided to prepare and present a new proposal to the SCAR executive committee for the coming years, aiming to continue the successful work until now and to incorporate other science fields to this investigation group (like biology) to achieve a real multi-disciplinarily research. The group also agreed to officially incorporate APECS (two representatives were suggested) to the future proposal, hopping to include more new young scientists to the on-going research.
Francisco Fernandoy (APECS representative SSG-GS and AGCS)
