Arctic processes

Understanding meteorological processes in the Arctic, including land areas such as Svalbard, is becoming increasingly important with today’s ongoing climate change. General climate models suggest that the largest temperature increase will be at high latitudes. However, both general climate models and normal weather forecast models show a high degree of uncertainty in polar regions. One of the underlying difficulties is how small scale processes in the atmospheric boundary layer and the sub-grid parameterisation are implemented. Previous studies in the Arctic suggest that small-scale processes in this region are very local and that spatial variation is significant. Thus, the question remains of how to draw representative generalisations, even for a small area, and what drives these local processes.

Studies of exchange processes over different Arctic surfaces, such as snow, ice, water and tundra are therefore made using measurements from mainly the Svalbard area. Other research areas include the influence of weather on avalanches and general boundary layer meteorology at high latitudes. 

Active: Anna Sjöblom, Björn Claremar, Andreas Andersson