Report on National activities, 2012 Poland

1. SAON Board Meeting, 1-2 October 2012 Potsdam Report on National activities, 2012Poland Waldemar Walczowski

2. 3 main observations areas: • Round year land investigations on the basis of the Polish Polar Station in Hornsund maintained by the Institute of Geophysics PAS; • The seasonal stations in the western Spitsbergen, maintained mostly by universities and other scientific institutions; • Ship-borne observations by the Institute of Oceanology PAS in Sopot during the yearly cruises of R/V Oceania to the Nordic Seas and Spitsbergen fjords. • Polish Arctic activity is coordinated by The Committee on Polar Research PAS

3. Polish Polar Station in Hornsund • Round year land investigations: • permanent meteorological observations (meteorological station), • geophysical investigations, • glaciological observations. • During the winter station is maintained by the permanent staff(10 persons and 2 dogs) • In the summer station provides support for several national and international expeditions (usually occupied by up to 30 persons). • Seasonal Stations • During the summer the geological, glaciological and climatological investigations has been carried in 5 stations.

4. Oceanography • 192 hydrographical stations (CTD, LADCP) at 12 sections between Northern Norway and Fram Strait (physical oceanography, biological, chemical and meteorological observations); • Spitsbergen fjords - the physical, geological and ecological investigations from the R/V ‘Oceania; • Hornsund - the oceanographic observations on the basis of the Polish Polar Station; • Moored array north of Svalbard - 2 moorings in the 9 moorings array in collaboration with NPI and WHOI • Educational activity about polar environment on the Maritime Academy vessel Horyzont II.

5. Coordination across networksand platforms for research and monitoring • Poland is a member of organizations and projects aimed to coordinate networks and platform access as FARO, Eurofleet, GOOS. • Participation in the European initiative SIOS (Svalbard Integrated Observing System) focused on coordination of the research activity around the Svalbard. • Role of the SAON in coordination across networks and platforms: • to disseminate information about and support 'partner matching' within the new and on-going networking initiatives; • to encourage the access of smaller partners to existing networks; • to maintain and disseminate the information database about existing platforms focused on possible collaboration topics, shared use of available resources, minimizing duplications of efforts and maximizing the scientific outcome; • to play an advisory role through collecting and distributing information about open calls and other funding possibilities relevant for the Arctic observation platforms and networks.

6. Access to data • Poland supports open data policy for data obtained both in the international and national projects. Data should be released on a short term basis (with a necessary delay for processing and QC). NRT data should be strongly supported if available. • SIOS aims in development of the Knowledge Centre with a database dedicated for the Svalbard research activities, Poland as the SIOS partner joined this initiative. • Sustained Arctic data archives are essential (since all project databases are short living)  one centralized data archive with capabilities to adopt the projects' databases after the end of a project ('databases repository') would be necessary;  including also historical data archives. • A platform focused on Arctic origin multidisciplinary data is the key issue • Data sets (data items) should be linked to individual DOIs (citable data sets) • Easily accessible and user friendly reporting system for meta information necessary • Learn from existing data archives like ICES database, PANGAEA database, etc. • Linking data archives (passive systems) with data information centers (active distribution of information on newly available data sets – newsletters, data alert services, open data forum for processing and QC) • Encouraging the national databases to establish and promote the Arctic data collections