Northern Eurasia Land Surface Properties and Change and its Role in the Global Earth System
12- 17 August 2007
Workshop Conveners: Guy Brasseur, Kathy Hibbard, Vladimir Romanovsky, Irina Sokolik, and Pavel Groisman
Background
Northern Eurasia is undergoing rapid and significant changes associated with changing climate and socio-economic patterns from the 20th century to present. Climatic changes over the largest landmass in the northern extratropics interact and affect the rate of the global change through atmospheric circulation and through strong biogeophysical and biogeochemical feedbacks. How these feedbacks impact the greater global system is largely unknown. Studies of environmental processes in this region are, therefore, an important contribution to reducing uncertainties in our understanding of global change beyond the domain of Northern Eurasia.
About the Workshop
A key issue for emerging Earth system models is the development of model components that capture biophysical and biological changes in the northern high latitudes. This Northern Eurasia Earth Science Partnership Initiative (NEESPI) workshop will tackle how to incorporate regional feedbacks associated with terrestria. Among the globally important factors of uncertainty to be discussed at the workshop are:
(a) changes in permafrost and their interaction with terrestrial carbon (methane and CO2 emissions);
(b) potentially dramatic land cover changes that may affect regional and global energy, water, and biogeochemical cycles, including atmospheric aerosol loading;
(c) strong climatic changes affecting and being affected by all the above and how to represent them in climate and Earth system models; and
(d) social processes that intertwine and feed back to environmental changes in the region and beyond.
Expected output of the Workshop will be a set of recommendations and an Implementation Plan for integration of NEESPI studies with the global Earth system modeling Community.
