Vedurstofa Islands

1. Vedurstofa Islands The Icelandic Meteorology centre, which also includes seismologists and avalanche experts. A hub for science!

2. Nikolai: Avalanche prediction, hazard analysis and prevention. Village Nikolai’s finger (above) shows the main source of avalanches above a small village. My finger shows a large A shaped structure that has been built to protect the village based on knowledge of previous avalanches (shown in red pen). The year after it was built in diverted two avalanches away from the village.

3. Christine: minutes from sending out the weather forecast for Iceland. Christine checks data from weather stations outside her window and from across the northern hemisphere. She then combines this information with information from satellites and prints out the current state of weather around Iceland. She then draws on where the fronts, lows and highs on. She compares this information with four different models to see which model is giving the best estimate for experienced weather. She then runs the best model forwards to see what the weather will do over the next 24 hours and writes her forecast accordingly.

4. Matthew: checking the seismographs and working out what is happening under his feet! Matthew monitors the 100s of earthquakes that happen in Iceland every day, how full the magma chambers of volcanoes are and how flood waters move through the countries ice caps. With this information he plots graphs and draws maps that help him predict what might happen in the future. This information is vital in helping protect and prepare Icelanders for the ‘exciting’ nature of their country!

5. Jonathon: mapping, dating and investigating huge prehistoric floods. Jonathon uses soil profiles and cores to find evidence of massive floods so powerful that they created this canyon in less that 10 days. They were created by a volcano going off under a glacier. By mapping their extent using complex GPS equipment and dating them using carbon dating he hopes to answer the question, could they happen again? And if so, who might be affected? And how can we protect people?

6. Alexandra: Canadian Oceanography Dept. • Changes in the distribution of freshwater (FW) in the Arctic Ocean can have large impacts on climate. For example, changes in the FW distribution can weaken the cold halocline, which increases vertical heat fluxes and decreases sea ice formation. By increasing the FW export from the Arctic Ocean, the stratification of the water column in the convective regions of the North Atlantic is increased, which affetcs the formation of deep water and hence the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (MOC). In our recent modeling work with the University of Victoria Earth System Climate Model (UVic ESCM), we showed that the lower-frequency variability of the large-scale atmospheric circulation over the Arctic is the major controlling factor for the variability of the liquid FW export from the Arctic. To further investigate the dynamics of changes in the FW distribution in the Arctic Ocean, we are now including tracers in the model to follow the movements of different water masses in the Arctic Ocean. To verify the model results, we will compare them with tracer data (e.g., delta18 O, 14C, He-Tr, CFCs) from the Environmental Tracer Group at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO). This will provide constraints to the simulated present-day Arctic climate, and by better constraining the present day simulation of the Arctic Ocean, these tracer studies will contribute to improved simulations of the future state of the Arctic and make projections of Arctic Ocean conditions in the future more reliable. • To answer the question of how FW distribution and FW export will change in an Arctic Ocean that is losing its summer sea ice cover (a possibility as early as 2050), we will investigate the changes in FW pathways, FW export, and heat fluxes in climate model simulations for the 21st century.