Future Ocean-Atmosphere Research in the Antarctic Region

Abstract

In the framework of this consideration we will primarily address research topics of the Antarctic region which are more or less interrelated with global climate. Earlier as well as recent field and model investigations have provided convincing evidence that certain physical processes in the polar atmosphere, ocean and cryosphere may support, enhance or even initiate global climate changes. Since the main components of the Earth’s climate are strongly coupled through non-linear interaction mechanisms, any perturbations excited somewhere in the system may suffer from significant changes in amplitude and frequency during their migration through the interrelated physical domain. Therefore, investigations of Antarctic geophysical processes should ideally cover a wide range of time and space scales and should include all important interacting climate elements. But in reality individual field observations and model studies have to be limited with respect to space and time due to technical, logistic and financial restrictions as well as to the lack of experienced manpower. Consequently, international programmes are required to create joint research projects in such a way that various single contributions may provide a satisfactory basis for reasonable syntheses.