Project Report
Understanding the role of sea ice in the Earth's system requires global collaboration across a broad variety of disciplines. Contributing to this effort, BEPSII (Biogeochemical Exchange Processes at Sea-Ice Interfaces) is an open international network of polar marine scientists dedicated to investigating biogeochemical and ecological processes in sea-ice zones. BEPSII members are experts from over 15 countries and at all career stages. A unique network, looking at the coupling between sea ice, ocean and atmospheric processes, BEPSII is a strongly bottom-up organization, tackling the challenges of studying sea-ice biogeochemistry and ice-associated ecosystems. One of the main goals of BEPSII is to train a new generation of sea-ice scientists. As part of their efforts to support ECSs, BEPSII launched an ECS Travel Award Program in 2020, which is again being offered in 2024.
The BEPSII ECS Exchange Award supports ECSs studying biogeochemical processes at ocean-ice-snow-atmosphere interfaces and wishing to collaborate with scientists at other institutions. The main goal is to support in-person collaboration, such as learning new techniques, interdisciplinary research projects, intercalibrations between laboratories, and synergy between research projects (e.g., field campaigns, laboratory experiments, and model development).
As the community of scientists working on this very topical subject is relatively small, the BEPSII steering committee considers the support of ECSs vital to the continuation of high-quality cross-cutting research and training of the next generation of polar leaders. The BEPSII ECS Exchange Award gives young scientists a unique opportunity to expand their research networks and acquire new skills and knowledge across disciplines.
We were able to fund two ECS research visits with the “BEPSII-IASC early-career scientist award 2024” grant.
Veronica Amoruso gained practical knowledge of the modelling/programming and a theoretical knowledge of the Hg processes in snow. At the moment, she is implementing her proposals into the mercury (Hg) module to test them, and by the end of December 2024, the “Hg snowpack module” should be fully developed. At the beginning of 2025, she will analyse Hg on real surface snow samples, collected explicitly to test the numerical “Hg snowpack module”. The final step of her project is the intercomparison between the module and real data, which she will either do remotely from Venice or during another visit to CSIC.
The nature of Marta Santos-Garcia’s visit was a bit different. She visited Dr. Paul Dodd and Dr. Laura de Steur at the Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI) in Tromsø, Norway, to discuss results related to her ongoing work on the Fram Strait Arctic Outflow Observatory program. They discussed the collected data and modelling results. They had daily meetings in which they honed the methodology and data visualization, mined additional data to further update the time series analyses and worked on a manuscript.
Both grantees were very pleased with the opportunity, and the outcomes of their visits were substantial. Although online meetings have provided great opportunities to be in contact with people around the world and, at the same time reduce CO2 emissions and traveling costs, there is still a genuine need for in-person collaboration. These in-person contacts are especially valuable for ECSs who are just building their networks and careers. This has been already seen in the outcomes of our previous ECS program. Therefore, we greatly appreciate IASC for supporting our ECS program in BEPSII!
Scientific highlights:
- New insights into the coupling between ocean physics and nutrient supplies that Marta Santos-Garcia developed with her mentors in Tromsø will be submitted to Nature.
- Veronica Amoruso developed a new model of mercury behaviour in snowpack for integration into the Community Earth System Model.
- These two early-career scientists developed valuable new contacts and skills, thanks to the opportunity for mentoring outside their own institutes
Date and Location
May-June and October-November 2024 | Madrid, Spain and Tromsø, Norway
IASC Working Groups funding the project
- Atmosphere WG
- Cryosphere WG
Project Lead
Eeva Eronen-Rasimus, Finnish Environment Institute, Finland; Pat Wongpan, University of Tasmania, Australia
Year funded by IASC
2024