Research campaign in the Arctic

The University of Barcelona organizes a new scientific campaign in the Arctic, which will start on June 26. The objective is to study whether the recent climate tendencies in Greenland —temperature rise and acceleration of ice loss— respond to a pattern that had been recorded other times in previous millenniums, or whether they correspond to the amplified effects of climate change in the planet. The campaign is part of the NEOARCTIC project, led by Marc Oliva, tenured university lecturer at the Department of Geography of the UB. The researchers will stay in the Arctic during July and August. Specifically, they will work in the area of Greenland's polar ice cap and in the northern area of Ellesmere Island, at the northern end of Canada. Among the tasks to carry out, they will reconstruct the climate variability of the last millennia in these northern regions after the study of the sediments of the lakebeds, and determining the advances and regressions of glaciers as a response to the changing climate conditions. Another objective of the campaign is to understand the geo-ecological changes in the soils, waters, and the plants that are taking place in the melting edges in Greenland's polar ice cap.