Ny-Ålesund Atmosphere Flagship Program: Further development and strengthening of the collaboration

The main goal of the Ny-Ålesund Atmosphere Flagship Program is to increase coordination and collaboration within atmosphere research in Ny-Ålesund and beyond, and to stimulate joint activities, all the above to increase research quality and minimize the environmental footprint. This proposal aim at continuing the gained momentum created over the last years to further develop and strengthen the Atmosphere Flagship both to broaden the thematic coverage and to exploit further scientific potential beyond the possibilities of the individual groups and institutes. The flagship activities can significantly contribute towards fulfillment of the SSF strategic objectives and play an important role in future efforts like SIOS. The atmospheric research in Svalbard has increased in diversity and magnitude over the last years. Besides more and more comprehensive long-term observational effort, there has been numerous short terms intensive field experiments with additional ones planned for the future. The majority of activities are complementary, hence coordination of the research and scientific exchange in terms of join data analysis, publications, gap analysis, and planning of future research has increasing potential. The flagship work is currently structured into six thematic work groups: WG1: Clouds, humidity and precipitation WG2: Atmospheric long-term observations and trends WG3: Boundary layer meteorology WG4: Snow-atmosphere-aerosols interactions WG5: Atmospheric aerosols WG6: Surface UV irradiance and ozone column In the proposed project, we plan to add additional two groups WG7: Atmospheric composition WG8: Middle and upper atmosphere To facilitate scientific discussion and join data analysis we plan to have two workshops (autumn 2018 and 2019), each a week long with themes aligned with the workgroups. In addition, there will be on-site field meeting in Ny-Ålesund to facilitate exchange of experimental knowledge.