Mains Paper 1 : Climatic Change |
Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level : MOSAiC Mission
Mains level : Consequences of climate change on Polar region
News
- Scientists from 17 nations will take part in the year-long MOSAIC mission as they anchor the RV Polarstern ship to a large piece of Arctic sea ice to study climate change.
MOSAiC mission
- The MOSAiC mission stands for Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate.
- It is a one-year-long expedition into the Central Arctic, planned to take place from 2019 to 2020.
- For the first time a modern research icebreaker will operate in the direct vicinity of the North Pole year round, including the nearly half year long polar night during winter.
- It comes about 125 years after Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen first managed to seal his wooden expedition ship, Fram, into the ice during a three-year expedition to the North Pole.
- MOSAiC will contribute to a quantum leap in our understanding of the coupled Arctic climate system and its representation in global climate models.
- The focus of MOSAiC lies on direct in-situ observations of the climate processes that couple the atmosphere, ocean, sea ice, bio-geochemistry and ecosystem.
Why study Arctic climate?
- The Arctic is a key area of global climate change, with warming rates exceeding twice the global average.
- The observed rate of climate change in the Arctic is not well reproduced in climate models.
- Many processes in the Arctic climate system are poorly represented in climate models because they are not sufficiently understood.
- Understanding of Arctic climate processes is limited by a lack of year round observations in the central Arctic.
is India a member of MOSAiC??