Cross-cutting activities for geosciences, atmospheric physics and space sciences

The activity was spread over the week from 21 to 24 August 2024 during the XI SCAR – Open Science Conference & Biennial Meeting (Pucon, Chile), including the scientific session (22 August), the Business Meeting (BM, 24 August), the mentoring and networking actions.

In the scientific session, titled “From atmosphere to geospacer: collaborative efforts in the polar regions”, and during the BM we opened an interdisciplinary discussion on the cross-cutting activities dealing with geosciences, physics, atmospheric and space sciences, and related disciplines in Arctic and Antarctica. The goal was triple: 1) identify synergy effects resulting from collaborative approach, 2) reinforce the bridge between Arctic and Antarctica on the open questions involving the polar atmosphere and the geospace, 3) encourage and support Students and Early Career Scientists to contribute to these topics.

In this framework, as Chief Officers of AGATA (Antarctic Geospace and ATmosphere research), at that time a SCAR Programme Planning Group, we invite all our attendees to consider AGATA as a common platform for collaborative efforts.

Thanks to our financial sponsors the AGATA Mentoring Programme supported 9 people, among students and ECRs, to attend in-person the events held in Pucon. In this framework 2 extra meetings have been held during the week to coordinate the mentorees and to propose joint papers led by them.

The session was successful, receiving 39 abstracts (33 of them were actually presented as oral or poster contributions) spanning from lower to upper atmosphere and geospace studies.
The BM, in hybrid format (in presence and virtual), had a wide participation from experts, students and ECRs. A lunch was offered to the attendees, also to encourage students/ECRs to networking. During the BM we discussed existing and planned initiatives that facilitate interdisciplinary collaborative research, and we also outlined the path towards the IPY 2032-2033. Experts from different disciplines provided some examples of successful collaborations to stimulate open and fruitful discussion. The BM also addressed possible strategies to identify gaps of common interests and proposed good collaborative practices.

The BM has consolidated the proposal of the new Scientific Research Program named AGATA presented in its final form to the SCAR delegates meeting (Punta Arenas, Chile and online, 26-28 August 2024). AGATA was then endorsed by SCAR as the fourth Scientific Research Program, starting from 1 January 2025 and lasting 8 years.

AGATA community will be definitively strongly involved in the IPY 2032-2033 activities and actions, that especially for geospace science is interhemispheric by definition, involving both poles.

Three highlights

1. One of the AGATA mentorees, Carlos Castillo Rivera from the Universidad de Santiago de Chile, was selected over about 1200 attendees of the conference, winning the gold medal for the best poster presented at the XI SCAR – Open Science Conference. The poster was titled: “Latitudinal Response of Total Electron Content during Storms and Substorms”.
2. The invited speaker Dr. Bea Gallardo-Lacourt explained a new subauroral phenomenon called STEVE (Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement), originally discovered by amateur night sky watchers and amateur auroral photographers. This contribution is a good example of citizens in science activities.
3. One of the session speaker, Vincenzo Romano, reported about the efforts spent to establish a common database for GNSS data in the Arctic (PAGINA project). The follow up discussion, also held during the BM, considered such approach as a best practice on data and competencies sharing to be adopted for polar region studies at large.

Summary of input provided for the ICARP IV process

The activities we run offered the occasion to discuss existing and planned initiatives that facilitate interdisciplinary collaborative research.

The research performed in Artic has been cited as good practice to follow also in Antarctica to gain better coordination also in view of the path towards the IPY 2032-2033. Experts from different disciplines provided examples of successful collaborations to stimulate open and fruitful discussion. In particular the attendees discussed around the multi-instruments exploitation to advance the current level of knowledge in different fields, spanning from astronomy to atmosphere and geospace studies. Also virtuous examples of data sharing have been matter of discussion.

Students and ECRs lively contributed to the success of the events and they interacted with senior scientists also to learn from their experience in the Arctic and Antarctic expeditions. The participants underline the fundamental addded value offered by AGATA as a common platform to advance the understanding of the interhemispheric behaviour of the atmosphere and of the near Earth space.

Recommendations for priorities in Arctic research for the coming decade

The whole-atmosphere interactions, including the coupling between atmospheric layers and between the neutral and ionized parts of the atmosphere, space weather and magnetospheric influences, and the whole atmosphere’s role in climate variations are outstanding scientific questions. These questions cannot be addressed without a multi-disciplinary and multi-instruments approach, and without bringing together communities which investigate and study the polar atmosphere and geospace. Taking the advantage of existing and planned instrumentation in Arctic and Antarctica, and coordinating research efforts and data exchange at global level are the keys to advance the current understanding. The interhemispheric perspective is a key asset to achieve the scope. In this framework is crucial to enhance the visibility of Antarctica as an important sentinel of geospace processes whose research today is mostly conducted with Northern hemispheric observations: the expertise on Arctic monitoring, study and modelling is expected to be integrated with the Antarctica counterpart to offer a global tackle to atmosphere/space weather and climate applications.

Recommendations for the implementation of the suggested priorities

What described above requires active involvement of various research groups in the field and ICARP IV should facilitate the process of synergy to gather all the interested community in a common framework. AGATA is ready to offer its platform as a starting point to do it and we strongly encourage ICARP IV to considerate AGATA as a reference framework of the atmosphere and geospace sciences at global scale, as already recognized by SCAR.

We ask ICARP IV to favour the synergy between the different scientific communities to contribute to answer fundamental physics questions:

1. How are different atmospheric layers coupled in the polar regions?
2. How does the upper polar atmosphere respond to increased geomagnetic activity, including energy transfer from space?
3. How does the whole polar atmosphere impact short- and long-term climate variations?

We recommend that ICARP IV will engage the next generation of scientists, fundamental to set up a multi-disciplinary and multi-instruments framework to train them and to make them the protagonists of the next IPY. Indeed the collaboration between senior and junior scientists will not only advance our current understanding of the polar atmosphere and geospace, but will support policy and decision makers.

In this context ICARP IV should highlight and support the following actions:

• Definition of the future scenarios due to the climate change to assess the necessary countermeasures;
• Development of atmospheric and geospace modelling to predict, alert and mitigate space weather effects on vulnerable technologies (GNSS positioning service, radio communication, etc.)
• Definition of the strategy to make the existing and planned research infrastructures multidisciplinary and multinstrumental, improving also their accessibility.

Main Organiser

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV), Italy); Wojciech J. Miloch (Department of Physics, University of Oslo, Norway); Nicolas Bergeot (Royal Observatory of Belgium, Belgium).

Type of Activity

• Workshop
• Survey

Dates and Locations

• 19-25 August 2024, Pucón, Chile, SCAR Open Science Conference 2024