{"id":7290,"date":"2024-12-19T14:15:39","date_gmt":"2024-12-19T13:15:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nersc.no\/?p=7290"},"modified":"2024-12-19T15:35:56","modified_gmt":"2024-12-19T14:35:56","slug":"the-nansen-legacy-project-has-given-us-groundbreaking-knowledge-about-the-barents-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nersc.no\/en\/features\/the-nansen-legacy-project-has-given-us-groundbreaking-knowledge-about-the-barents-sea\/","title":{"rendered":"The \u201cNansen Legacy\u201d project has given us groundbreaking knowledge about the Barents Sea"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The \u201cNansen Legacy\u201d project has given us groundbreaking knowledge about the Barents Sea<\/h1><\/div>[vc_column_text css=””]The Barents Sea is of great importance to Norway and is particularly vulnerable to climate change. The \u201cNansen Legacy\u201d project focused on climate and ecological conditions in the area. Around 300 researchers from ten Norwegian institutions, including the Nansen Center, have contributed to what is the largest Norwegian research project ever.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

Preparations for \u201cNansen Legacy\u201d began as early as 2011, and the project work started in full swing in 2017. The project budget totalled NOK 740 million, with contributions from the Ministry of Education and Research, the Research Council of Norway and contributions from the participating institutions (see fact box). Over the course of the project period, the researchers involved have made great efforts in the various disciplines included in the project. Several exciting research results have been produced, all of which address the big question: \u201cHow does the marine ecosystem in the northern Barents Sea respond to climate change?\u201d.\u00a0 The question was sought to be answered through five different sub-projects; Physical drivers<\/span><\/a>, Human impacts<\/span><\/a>, The living Barents Sea<\/span><\/a>, The future Barents Sea<\/span><\/a>, and Technology and method development<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Nansen Center’s tasks in the project have mostly been related to sea-ice modelling. Through the project, the sea-ice model neXtSIM has been further developed so that it can now provide better representations of small-scale processes such as the formation of ridges and leads in the ice. Other sea-ice models do not have a high enough resolution or a good enough description of how forces act upon the ice to be able to recreate what happens. These small-scale processes are believed to have a major impact on the development of conditions in the Arctic and changes in future climate. The first step in the improvement work was the development of a new rheology in the sea-ice model. A rheology is a mathematical description of how sea ice is compressed, stretched, or otherwise changed due to wind and ocean currents. Using the new rheology, neXtSIM gives us a greater insight into the interaction between atmosphere, ocean, and sea ice. The model also produces more accurate results. Read more about this in our news story from 2022<\/a><\/span>, or see the publication \u00d3lason et al., 2022<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

The sea-ice model was also coupled with an ocean model to calculate the interaction between the atmosphere, ocean, and sea ice in a new and improved way. The development work has been demanding, but very rewarding for the sea-ice modelling group at the Nansen Center. Two more articles on the subject have been published by the same researchers, with results that are of particular importance to the project’s objectives.<\/p>\n

Guillaume Boutin and colleagues used the coupled model to investigate how much of the ice produced during the winter months is formed in leads. Using the model, they found that up to a third of all ice in the Arctic is formed in leads. They also found that the proportion of ice formed in leads increased during the period they studied (2010-2018). Read more about this in our news story from 2023<\/span><\/a>, or see the publication Boutin et al., 2023<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Heather Regan and colleagues also used this coupled model to study processes that affect changes in multi-year ice, both in terms of ice extent and volume. The findings clearly show that the formation of ridges has a large impact on sea-ice area in years when there is little sea ice. There are also examples of how small-scale processes \u2013 such as the formation of ridges \u2013 affect conditions in the Arctic. This is described in more detail in the center’s news story from 2023<\/a> and in the publication Regan et al., 2023<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Nansen Center is alone in being able to produce data from a sea-ice model with a realistic representation of leads and ridges. Both the model improvements and the coupled version of the model developed through the project are used in other models and projects. This research has thus contributed to a paradigm shift in the modelling of sea-ice dynamics.<\/p>\n

Going forward, Norwegian research communities are planning a major initiative, \u201cPolhavet 2050<\/a><\/span>\u201d, a project initiative with 18 participating institutions and a planned budget totalling 2 billion NOK. The project will run over a 10-year period and will be an important Norwegian contribution to the Fifth International Polar Year 2032-2033. The Nansen Center’s director is deputy chairman of the board of \u201cPolhavet 2050\u201d, and several of the center’s researchers are key members of the scientific writing group. The aim of the project is to study what an ice-free Arctic Ocean in summer will look like, which is assumed to be the situation within 25 years. The initiative builds on lessons learnt from \u201cNansen Legacy\u201d and aims to explore how the environmental and political consequences of climate change can be managed more effectively through long-term collaboration.<\/p>\n

Key researchers:<\/strong> Einar \u00d3lason<\/span><\/a>, Guillaume Boutin<\/span><\/a>, Timothy Williams<\/span><\/a>, Anton Korosov<\/a><\/span>, Heather Regan<\/span><\/a>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][vc_column width=”1\/3″ css=”.vc_custom_1695033709348{padding-right: 0px !important;}”]

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“Nansen Legacy”<\/strong><\/h2>\n

You can find more information on the project website<\/a><\/span>.<\/p><\/div>

\n

Project partners<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Akvaplan-niva<\/p>\n

Institute of Marine Research<\/p>\n

The Norwegian Meteorological Institute<\/p>\n

Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center<\/p>\n

Norwegian Polar Institute<\/p>\n

Norwegian University of Science and Technology<\/p>\n

UiT The Arctic University of Norway<\/p>\n

UNIS The University Centre in Svalbard<\/p>\n

University of Bergen<\/p>\n

University of Oslo<\/p><\/div>

\n

The Nansen Center’s most important contributions to “Nansen Legacy”<\/strong><\/h2>\n

 <\/p>\n

Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cA New Brittle Rheology and Numerical Framework for Large-Scale Sea-Ice Models\u201d (2022)<\/p>\n

Read the article<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Cryosphere:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cArctic sea ice mass balance in a new coupled ice\u2013ocean model using a brittle rheology framework\u201d (2023)<\/p>\n

Read the article<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Cryosphere:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cModelling the evolution of Arctic multiyear sea ice over 2000\u20132018\u201d (2023)<\/p>\n

Read the article<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>

\n

Read more about sea ice<\/strong><\/h2>\n

On our website, you find information on sea ice<\/span><\/a> and sea-ice modelling<\/a><\/span>.<\/p><\/div>[\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[vc_row][vc_column][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”2\/3″ css=”.vc_custom_1693479579188{background-color: #ffffff !important;}”][vc_column_text css=””]The Barents Sea is of great importance to Norway and is particularly vulnerable to climate change. The \u201cNansen Legacy\u201d project focused on climate and ecological conditions in the area. Around 300 researchers from ten Norwegian institutions, including the Nansen Center, have contributed to what is the largest Norwegian research project […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7292,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-26 14:19:02","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nersc.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nersc.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nersc.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nersc.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nersc.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7290"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/nersc.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7309,"href":"https:\/\/nersc.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7290\/revisions\/7309"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nersc.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nersc.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nersc.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nersc.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}