International Polar Year 2007–2008 - WMO

McLaughlin) and the BGEP (Beaufort Gyre Exploration
Project, led by Andrey Proshutinsky) to optimize use of
available resources.
In 2007 and 2008, C3O used two science-capable
icebreakers of the Canadian Coast Guard whose current
mission tracks encircle Canada (Fig. 2.2-8) to obtain a
snapshot of large-scale ocean and ecosystem properties
and thus establish a scientific basis for sustained
monitoring of Canada’s subarctic and arctic seas in the
wake of global warming. C3O collected fundamental
data on temperature, salinity, nutrients, oxygen, the
carbon system, virus, bacteria, phytoplankton, zooplankton,
fish, benthos and whales, with the goal of establishing
connections between the physical environment
and the living nature. The following observations
were made in the two-year period: 551 CTD/rosette
stations; 324 underway CTD and expendable CTD stations;
148 zooplankton net hauls; 64 biological stations
(viral abundance, DNA/RNA, primary production); and
approximately 24,000 km of underway sampling. The
ultimate goal of C3O is to establish a ‘scientific fence’
around Canada with observations that will allow both
observers and modellers to gauge the progress and
consequences of global change and thus provide policy
makers and the Canadian public with information
essential to governance, adaptation and resiliencebuilding
in the Canadian North. Regular repetition
through to 2050 would reveal the expected redistributions
of oceanic boundaries and biomes (Carmack
and McLaughlin; 2001; Grebmeier et al.; 2006) and give
scientists and policy makers access to the time-scales
of change that have the greatest social relevance and
impact. Nevertheless, the value of C3O will not rest entirely
with its own findings. With 26 separate study sites
covering a broad range of disciplines, the ‘connectivity’
of C3O with the results of other major IPY projects can
be expected to be high. These expected yet unpredictable
linkages between project results represent, in
many ways, the unplanned ‘profit’ of IPY, developing a
more thorough and a more complex understanding of
the processes of arctic change than might be evident
from any single project. One emerging example – from
Fig. 2.2-8. The 26 sites
and subjects that are
presently monitored
under the twoship
Canadian C3O
program, designed to
assess the progress
of global change
throughout Canada’s
three oceans.
(Source: Eddy Carmack, IOS)
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