Introduction
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) was established in June 1995 under the framework of the U.S.-Russian Joint Commission on Economic and Technological Cooperation. The EWG's objective was to explore ways in which the United States and Russia could exchange unclassified data that has been derived from each country's national security collection systems. In January 1996, as one of its first joint projects, the Environmental Working Group was tasked with compiling digital data on arctic regions in order to contribute to a deeper scientific understanding of the Arctic. In the course of several joint technical workshops, it was decided to develop a set of three complementary climatic atlases for the Arctic: oceanography, sea ice, and meteorology. This set of atlases, to be distributed to the public in CD-ROM format, would facilitate detailed scientific investigations of the interactions within the unified climate "atmosphere-ice-ocean" system.
In 1997-8, the Oceanographic Atlas of the Arctic Ocean was released to the public on two CD-ROMs, one covering the winter period, the other covering summer. The Sea Ice Atlas is currently (May 2000) in final stages of preparation.
During 1998 and 1999 preparation of the electronic Arctic Meteorology and Climate Atlas was carried out by specialists from the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI), St. Petersburg, Russia, University of Washington, Seattle, MEDEA scientists, and the University of Colorado, Boulder, USA. This U.S.-Russian effort involved the collection, standardization and analysis of existing and newly available meteorological and climatological information from U.S. and Russian sources and includes:
The specific motivation to prepare the Arctic Meteorology and Climate Atlas -- and the others in this series -- was the availability of previously restricted U.S. and Russian data. These data were combined with internationally available data sets to form the present regional Atlas. A single data bank of synoptic observations from the "North Pole" Drifting Stations, western drifting stations, ice patrol vessels , and data from Drifting Automatic Radiometeorological Stations was constructed. Use of these data, together with data from coastal and island meteorological stations in Russia and western countries made it possible to obtain reliable estimates of climatic parameters in the central Arctic Basin.
The Atlas presents not only climatic fields of individual meteorological parameters, but also a significant volume of the original synoptic observations. These provide the necessary information for study of the exchange processes between the atmosphere and ocean, and supply data for the initial and boundary conditions for atmospheric and oceanic circulation models and their validation. The Atlas also provides users with long-term climatic averages for the Arctic.
In addition to meteorological data products, the Atlas contains a brief history of Arctic weather observations, and a primer on Arctic Meteorology. The Atlas will serve polar scientists, as well as others interested in these topics. The Atlas contents will support future investigations for a broad range of purposes. We wish our users success in their work.
Vladimir Radionov |
Roger Barry |