PolarRes

PolarRES aims to close critical knowledge gaps on the influence of Polar changes on the global climate system. 

The Polar Regions play a crucial role in balancing the global climate system, yet there are still critical knowledge gaps regarding the impact of their processes on multiple scales and how they are evolving with our changing climate.

PolarRES studies the interactions between the atmosphere, oceans, and sea ice in the Arctic and Antarctic. This project aims to enrich our understanding of the interacting nature and feedback of Polar processes and their consequences in both regional and global contexts. By understanding these processes and interactions, PolarRES assesses how to make climate projections in the Polar Regions more reliable and what these projections means for society and the environment.

This project explores the key physical and chemical process in the Polar Regions to help us gain a better understanding of the two-way interactions between the Polar Regions and lower latitudes. Our research also explores how changes in Polar climate will affect the surrounding regions through a number of environmental systems such as Boreal forest fires, permafrost thaw, and marine ecosystem productivity.

Thanks to its unique and innovative approach, PolarRES is able to comprehensively investigate the multi-scale nature of changing polar climates. This is being executed through the use of storylines to significantly better understand how the projected changes in the global circulation influence the climate of the Arctic and Antarctic, and vice versa.

PolarRES is a multi-partner project, and a member of the EU Polar Cluster.

Impact

The current generation of climate models (e.g., CMIP6) provide a nonspecific, unified response from multiple models rather than the true diverse response we experience with climate change. In response, the storyline approach developed by PolarRES allows us to study multiple outcomes of climate change and analyse a wider range of environmental changes. With this storyline approach we can improve the quality of information obtained from climate models.

PolarRES’s storylines are connected to environmental risks which will help us understand the Arctic and Antarctic climate systems. The impact from the storylines on these environmental risks will vary by hemisphere and their individual dynamics.