Snow sampling every week near Gruvebadet (Svalbard)

The AUXMON (AUXiliary MONitoring) project aims at providing a continuous monitoring of auxiliary variables useful to support investigation of night-sky brightness. Sky-Quality Meters (SQM) sensors are one of the core infrastructure of the project. They are low-cost sensors for measuring night sky brightness.

Snow Core Data (SnowCorD) Project start: 2021-05-01 - end: 2025-12-31 The estimation of the Fractional Snow-Covered Area in the Brøgger Peninsula ensambling processed imagery located at different sites with different spatial resolutions. This dataset will be aimed to support the estimation of cryospheric information using remotely sensed data. The Ensembled FSCA retrievals are obtained, at the moment, by terrestrial photography applications established at the Amundsen-Nobile Climate Change Tower, at the Zeppelin observatory and at the Gruvebadet Snow Research Site in the Kongsfjorden area.

This dataset comprises measurements from a moored thermistor, collected by the Krossfjord Italian Mooring (KIM), which is managed by the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council (CNR). The data was gathered in the Krossfjord, Svalbard Island, since September 2020. This dataset is also part of the SIOS-Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System, developed to observe the impacts of climate change, including the rapid loss of sea ice cover, the retreat of local glaciers, and the Atlantification of Arctic seas. Mesured properties: seawater temperature. The acquisition of this time series data is still ongoing and will continue, bolstered by the inclusion of this infrastructure within the framework of the Italian PNRR project ITINERIS. This ensures sustained data collection and further enhances our understanding of the observed environmental changes.

This dataset comprises measurements from moored Acustic Doppler Current Profiler (ADCP), collected by the S1 Mooring, which is managed by the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council (CNR) and National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics (OGS). The data was gathered on the Fram Strait south of the Spitsbergen in an open-sea area strongly influenced by both the interaction between Atlantic (northward-moving) and Arctic (southward-moving) waters as well as by the presence and winter formation of sea ice and atmospheric forcing. The easternmost part of the Fram Strait, relatively warm and salty Atlantic waters flow, bringing heat to the Arctic region and contributing to the Atlantification phenomenon. The processes responsible of the inter-annual and seasonal variability of the deep current flow in this open sea region are still unknown and also what the implications are related to ongoing climate change and in particular to the progressive decrease of sea ice cover in the winter period. To understand these dynamics, a deep-water oceanographic S1 Mooring was anchored at about 1040 meters depth, since June 2014. The dataset is also part of the SIOS-Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System, developed to observe the impacts of climate change, including the rapid loss of sea ice cover, the retreat of local glaciers, and the Atlantification of Arctic seas. The ADCP mounted at 420 m measure: sea-water currents intensity and direction along the water column. The acquisition of this time series data is still ongoing and will continue, bolstered by the inclusion of this infrastructure within the framework of the Italian PNRR project ITINERIS. This ensures sustained data collection and further enhances our understanding of the observed environmental changes.

Aerosol Flux in Arctic (ALFA) Evaluate aerosol dry deposition/emission in the Arctic on icy/snowy surface and its dependence on particle size and micrometeorological parameters. The measures of the particles exchange rate will be carried out with the technique of eddy-correlation at Ny Alesund in size-segregated mode (2-3000 nm) coupling a sonic anemometer, a CPC and an optical particle counter (OPC) that are able to detect fluctuations of the particles concentration at high frequency (1Hz).

Carbon flux and its isotopic signature in arctic regions under climate change (CarIsoA) Study carbon flux by evaluating CO2 assimilation on target species. Parameters: Light curve, CO2 curve and temperature curve for on Salix polaris, Saxifraga cespitosa, Dryas octopetala and Carex polaris

The automated nivological station was installed in November 2020 in a flat area over the tundra about 80 meters far from the Gruvebadet Atmospheric Laboratory and nearby a snow sampling site from where weekly snow samples are collected for chemical analysis. Sensors (Pt100 1/3 DIN) have been calibrated by their companies before installation and are connected to a datalogger for continuous acquisition. For all the parameters, data are logged with 10-minute time resolution and then averaged over 1 hour. This activity is carried out by the Aldo Pontremoli Centre part of the Joint Research Agreement ENI-CNR, in the framework of the SnowCorD project (SIOS Core Data).

The Brøgger peninsula located in the north-western sector of Svalbard, is rich in shallow lakes, very different in morphology, height from sea level, composition of lake sediments, seasonal snow cover and presence/absence of migratory avian fauna in their catchment areas . In 2022, as part of the EcoClimate project (PI Prof. Edoardo Calizza), the research unit of the Institute of Polar Sciences of Messina set up a first series of sensors (Temperature; light) in 8 lakes spatially distributed at different heights from the sea and with different inputs of organic and inorganic substance. The observatory is currently in its second year of measurements.

High-Latitude Aurora Activity Monitor by means of an automatised digital camera, recording all-sky images in the 630.0 nm (red), 557.7 nm (green) and 427.8 nm (blue) wavelengths. The camera is operated by INAF (Italian National Institute of Astrophysics) and contributes to the international network MIRACLE (https://space.fmi.fi/MIRACLE/), with instruments distributed along the Scandinavia and the Svalbard. The camera started operating in November 1999, when it was located on the roof of the French building (Lat = 78° 55' 20" N, Lon = 11° 56' 02" E). In November 2015 the instrument was moved to the Sensitive Lights Cabin (Lat = 78° 56' 28.2" N, Lon = 11° 50' 31.7" E, Elev. = 28 m). The Instrument was then updated in 2017 with a new cooled CMOS camera, which replaced the old CCD camera + image intensifier.