After the postponement of about 6 month The “International MOSAiC Science Conference/Workshop” was held from 25th to 29th April 2022 on the Telegrafenberg campus in Potsdam (Germany). We hosted an in-person meeting with a fully hybrid setting, allowing us to adapt to any situation. In a mixture of conference presentations and workshops in smaller groups, the participants presented their results so far, gave insights into their analyses and the processing status of their data and discuss future publications and collaborations. It was the first meeting for the MOSAiC community after the expedition and the enthusiasm was great that so many people could came together and exchanged ideas directly on site. But even project participants who could not or did not want to travel to the meeting were able to participate online virtually. More than 240 people attended and presented about 170 contributions (talks & posters).
Background
The MOSAiC expedition was a big success and scientists collected terabytes of data and thousands of samples during the year of the expedition. Now, more than one year after the end of the expedition, a large meeting was organized to present and discuss the scientific results.
The “International MOSAiC Science Conference/Workshop” addressed the whole MOSAiC community and offers the chance to present preliminary experimental and modelling results and to enhance the interaction and interlinkages between the different disciplines of the coupled Arctic climate system. Supporting this, the meeting offered platforms to develop future analyses and publication strategies, support and foster connections to other groups and disciplines and to identify and develop joint projects. The meeting advertised the unique data sets and attracted the big modelling centers. In such a way the “International MOSAiC Science Conference/Workshop” functioned as a big step towards the improvement of the sea ice and weather forecast and regional and global climate models.
Meeting Concept
We envisioned a meeting concept that combined aspects of a conference and a workshop with sessions for oral and poster presentations and a great number of breakout sessions for detailed discussions (see the final schematic agenda below). Therefore, the meeting offered plenary sessions in the beginning to inform generally about the scientific status of MOSAiC and breakout sessions for the individual MOSAiC Teams.
In addition, we had parallel sessions (green slots) following the character of a conference with scientific oral and poster presentations (or maybe another type of presentation) on Tuesday and Wednesday. For those sessions, abstracts could be submitted. Please check the list of sessions below.
Furthermore, towards the end of the week, it was planned to have breakout sessions (brown slots) that allow detailed discussions. Many topics were defined, but there was capacity to spontaneously develop breakout sessions to respond to topics that will come up during the meeting.
To allow a lively and agile meeting, we have flexible time slots (grey slots) in the agenda to enable small meetings and discussion rounds. There will was the opportunity to book meeting rooms or to use meeting points at the venue.
Agenda
Travel Support for Early Career Scientists
Thanks to the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) we had funding available to support Early Career Scientists (ECS) with their travel costs (IASC Cross-Cutting Funded Projects).
Scientific Sessions
Based on the scientific work that is ongoing in the MOSAiC community, 14 tentative sessions were proposed that mainly cover cross-cutting disciplines and therefore address the main goal of MOSAiC to investigate the couple Arctic Climate system. Those sessions were open for abstract submission. They were planned as parallel sessions during Tuesday, April 26th and Wednesday, April 27th.
List of Sessions
Session 1: Freshwater Lens
Session 2: Atmosphere-ice-ocean coupling
Session 3: Storms, their processes and impacts
Session 4: Ridge processesSession 5: Freeze-up and winter processes – CANCELLED
Session 6: Solar partitioning
Session 7: Snow and ice mass balance
Session 8: Sea Ice property evolution
Session 9: Sea ice dynamics
Session 10: Remote Sensing
Session 11: Carbon cyclingSession 12: Issues of Spatial Scale – CANCELLED
Session 13: Atmospheric Structure, Composition, Aerosols, and Clouds
Session 14: Drivers of food web dynamics across the ice-ocean interface
Session 15: Advancing Arctic System Predictability
Session 16: First insights into biological processes and diversity during MOSAiC drift
Description of Sessions
Session 1: Freshwater Lens
Examines summertime melt water and the accumulation of freshwater leading to upper ocean stratification with implication for many different processes, including dynamics within leads, vertical mixing, implication of stratification on gas transfer, impacts on biological communities, upper ocean heat transfer, and many others.
Session 2: Atmosphere-ice-ocean coupling
Focuses on coupled system processes that link the atmosphere, sea ice, and ocean, with focus on thermodynamic, dynamic, radiative, gas transfer, and other related processes that affect the momentum, energy and mass exchange between the climate components. Both observational and modeling perspectives are appropriate, including studies focused on specific components of these coupled processes.
Session 3: Storms, their processes and impacts
Examines cross-cutting aspects of storms from their physical structure, to their impacts on the surface, and more. Specific focus is on cyclones, warm air intrusions, cold air outbreaks, other synoptic or large-scale organized systems, the interactions between storms and sea ice (dynamic and thermodynamic effects), impacts on the upper ocean (e.g. enhanced mixing or triggering (sub)mesoscale features), hydrological cycle (e.g. precipitation accumulation), surface energy budget, and other related processes. Based on observational analysis or modeling studies.
Session 4: Ridge processes
Includes the physical and ecological processes related to sea-ice ridges, including their interactions with the ocean, sea ice, snow, atmosphere, and more. Include modeling work (e.g. how models can represent ice pressure ridge formation and decay).
Session 5: Freeze-up and winter processes – CANCELLED
Focuses on the physical and biogeochemical processes (including tracers) related to the autumn freeze-up and the progression of freezing process through the winter season. Relevant topics could include freeze processes for various surfaces, the impact of leads, the role of key events, mid-winter dynamics, and more.
Session 6: Solar partitioning
Examines all aspects of how sunlight is partitioned by the coupled system, including the spatial and temporal variability of sunlight reflected by different surface types, absorption in the snow and ice, and transmission to the ocean. The impacts of this partitioning on heat budgets and ecosystems can also be considered.
Session 7: Snow and ice mass balance
Includes all aspects of snow accumulation and sea ice mass balance, such as snow accumulation and redistribution, sea-ice growth, snow and ice melt, snow and ice temperature profiles, spatial variability and evolution, etc. Includes modeling work to represent variation of snow and its properties (e.g., melt ponds, albedo) and how that affects simulations.
Session 8: Sea Ice property evolution
Examines the process-oriented evolution of sea ice from physical, geochemical, and ecological perspectives, including temporal and spatial variability. This session will include major observations from the CO FYI and SYI time-series sites (the darksite) and BGC sampling sites, among others. Annual and seasonal perspectives are relevant. Includes modeling work.
Session 9: Sea ice dynamics
A general focused on sea ice drift and deformation from local to regional scales, ice rheology and strength, winter dynamics preconditioning summer conditions, and related themes. Includes related modeling (e.g., ice drift forecast by SIDFeX or ice dynamic parameterizations and simulations).
Session 10: Remote Sensing
All aspects of remote sensing work covering all compartments (sea ice, atmosphere, ocean, etc.) and topics (water vapour, microwave properties including modeling, ice drift and type from SAR, ice thickness, leads and floe size, melt ponds/albedo from optical data, EM-bird, laser scanner, helipod and more). Includes satellite, helicopter/airborne and on-ice/Polarstern based work.
Session 11: Carbon cycling
Focus on inorganic and organic carbon compound cycling within and across the lower atmosphere, snow/ice, and upper ocean, including interfacial transfer among these. Fluxes associated with specific events are of particular interest.
Session 12: Issues of Spatial Scale – CANCELLED
This cross-cutting session seeks to answer the question: What can we learn from combining local and distributed observations? For example, the DN vs. CO or local vs. distributed ice and snow measurements. Of related interest are issues related to the context and scaling of observations (i.e., albedo from point to model grid box), characterizing and representing heterogeneity (e.g. (sub)mesoscale eddies), and how these observations are utilized in models.
Session 13: Atmospheric Structure, Composition, Aerosols, and Clouds
This session will serve as a broad venue for many topics in atmospheric science, including observational and modeling studies of aerosol and cloud processes, aerosol sources, transport, composition, precipitation processes, atmospheric moisture, interaction with the atmospheric boundary layer, and related atmospheric dynamics.
Session 14: Drivers of food web dynamics across the ice-ocean interface
Focuses on the influence of ice-ocean boundary layer conditions and hydrography on structuring communities, organismal interactions and distributions.
Session 15: Advancing Arctic System Predictability
This session covers a broad range of large-scale atmosphere, ice-ocean, and coupled modeling contributions, including reporting on systematic model errors, results from data assimilation and data denial experiments, Arctic-lower latitude linkages, and their role for short-term to seasonal prediction of atmosphere and sea ice components.
Session 16: First insights into biological processes and diversity during MOSAiC drift
This session would allow presentations of all eco-groups highlighting their ongoing work and showcasing first results from ice and water column studies
Contact
In case you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the local organizing committee via mosaic-office@mosaic-expedition.org.