Annual Report 2015Nansen Environmental and

Remote Sensing CenterBergen - Norway

affiliated with the University of Bergen

VisionThe vision of the Nansen Center is to serve the society through advancing knowledge on the marine environment and climate system in the spirit of Nobel Laureate and humanist Fridtjof Nansen.The main research areas of the Nansen Center include:

• Climate processes, variability and change• Arctic and Marine remote sensing • Ocean modelling, data assimilation and

forecasting• Societal impact of global change

OrganizationThe Nansen Center was founded in 1986 as an independent non-profit research founda-tion affiliated with the University of Bergen, Norway. The Nansen Center conducts cli-mate and environmental research projects funded by research councils, the European Commission, space agencies, national and international government agencies, as well as private donations, in cooperation with business and industry. The Nansen Center is a national environmental research institute and receives basic funding from the Ministry of Climate and Environment through the Research Council of Norway. As a national environmental research insti-tute the Center has strengthened it´s exper-tise through institutional strategic programs within studies of regional climate change, in-cluding studies of sea level change and local air quality in urban areas. Operational ocean-ographic studies and services in the Arctic, focusing on integrating observations and the development of ocean and sea ice modelling and forecasting. Climate studies with a focus on teleconnections and coupling between the Arctic and monsoon systems in India and China, as well as integrated multidisciplinary climate and environmental research. Over the last 30 years the Nansen Center has built up extensive knowledge on the development and application of satellite-based Earth obser-vation (EO) data. In particular the Center aims at being a national resource for knowledge of EO research within marine, cryosphere and climate studies. An increased focus on cross-disciplinary research cooperation and syner-gies between existing scientific disciplines has strengthened the scientific expertise of the Center. The establishments of nine the-matic research groups have also strengthened both the expertise and research capacity of the Center. The research activities and pro-jects in 2015 have accordingly been reorgan-

ized into these thematic research groups within the GC Rieber Climate Research Institute, the Mohn-Sverdrup Center for Global Ocean Studies and Operational Oceanography and Department for Polar and Environmental Research.

StaffBy the end of 2015 the Nansen Center employed 77 people from 24 na-tions. There were four new members of staff in 2015. The scientific staff includes 10 Postdocs and six Ph.D. candidates in recruitment and educational positions. Four scientists have ad-junct positions at the University of Bergen and UNIS at Svalbard, as well as one staff member who holds a Guest professor at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Several of the scientists supervise PhD and Master students and are also giving lectures at university courses and summer/winter research schools. 14 Norwegian and international scientists have adjunct positions at the Center, and contribute to strengthen-ing the scientific and international research capacity of the Center.17 scientists and students from the Nansen Centers in Russia, China, India, South Africa and Bangladesh as well as other international research institutions have visited the Center in periods from weeks to several months. In total in 2015 the time spent at the Center from these visiting scientists was 52 person-months. One Research Director has been visiting the office of the Research Council of Norway in Brussels for six months in 2015, in order to strengthen the relations and net-work with the European Commission. One Ph.D. student is permanently located at the Nansen Center office in Svalbard Science Park in Longyearbyen.

Working EnvironmentThe Nansen Center’s goal is to be an equal opportunity employer. Regarding the gender balance, 34% of the employees are female, with 25% among the scientific staff, which is 2 %-points less than in 2014. The Center does not discriminate employees due to ethnicity, nationality, ancestry, colour, language, religion or belief.The premises and working environment are very satisfactory – both in the main office in Bergen and at the office in Svalbard Research Park, Longyearbyen. The Board, the admin-istration and the employees, through the Working Environment Committee (AMU) have focused on health, environment and safety (HMS) in 2015. Absence due to sickness was 4,46% of the total work effort, which is an increase from 3,58% in 2014. The Center has a defined environmental policy and the Board concludes that the activities do not pollute or in any other way harm the environment.

Scientific ProductionDuring 2015 the scientific staff published 49 scientific articles in international peer re-viewed journals which are registered in the Norwegian Science Index (NVI). Three pub-lished articles were not eligible for the NVI. This is nine fewer scientific NVI articles than were published in 2014. In addition there were 43 conference proceedings and pres-entations, 20 technical and other reports, as well as four communications or chronicles published - in total there were 119 publica-tions. In 2015 the Ministry of Education and Research changed the regulations for the calculation of institutional NVI publication scores. The new regulations favour multi-institutional and international co- authorship and cooperation, which turned out to be fa-vourable to the overall NVI-publications score for the Center.One PhD student defended her dissertation at the University of Bergen in 2015:• Dr. Mary Swapna George: Modelling and

observations of upwelling along the south-west coast of India and its intrusion into the Bay of Bengal, during summer mon-soon. Supervisors at the Nansen Center: O.M. Johannessen and L. Bertino.

Three students have passed their Master ex-ams at the University of Bergen after com-pleting their studies at, and with supervision from scientists at, the Nansen Center (see page 11).The Center actively engages in public out-reach through the press, television and popu-lar science lectures. At least 95 media reports about our research results and scientists have been registered in 2015. Many of these media reports have been associated with the FRAM 2014/15 polar drift station, where Prof. Yngve Kristoffersen and Audun Tholfsen drifted across the Arctic Ocean with the hovercraft Sabvabaa. The FRAM2014/15 expedition was successfully completed in Longyearbyen on 22. August 2015 after one year of collecting unique environmental data from the interior of the Arctic. Our research on air quality in Bergen obtained significant media attention in connection with several high air pollution events during fall 2015. The GC Rieber Fund has supported this research with three years of funding for a PhD candidate. Scientists from the Center have also contributed to two

2015-repor t f romthe board

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Cover page: The Arctic sea-ice concen-tration mid-September 2008 as simu-lated with the neXtSIM sea-ice model developed at the Nansen Center. Courtesy: Einar Örn Ólason and A7Print.

The staff at the centre originates from 24 countries world-wide.

major Norwegian climate reports commis-sioned by the Directorate of Environment in 2015 – Climate in Norway in 2100 and Sea Level Change for Norway, Past and Present observations and Projections to 2100. Both reports attracted significant media attention when they were launched during fall 2015 and in particular the sea level report was im-portant for the Nansen Center. The Nansen Center participated in Forskningsdagene 2015 with the exhibition From physics to food in the oceans. The exhi-bition was at Festplassen and was visited by about 2000 school students and 6000 other visitors. The movie Svalbard – Arctic seasons was also frequently shown to visitors to the Center in our cinema.

AwardsNansen Center scientist Dr. Richard Davy re-ceived the Outstanding Young Scientist Award from the European Geophysical Union in May 2015 for his atmospheric research.

National CooperationThe Nansen Center is a partner in the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research/Centre for Climate Dynamics, the Hjort Centre for Marine Ecosystem Dynamics, as well as a member of the Norwegian Climate Center and Bergen Marine Research Cluster. Furthermore, the Center has a memorandum of understanding with the Institute of Marine Research and the Meteorological Institute within operational oceanography and ocean modelling. The Nansen Center has extensive cooperation with the University of Bergen, the University Studies at Svalbard (UNIS), the Arctic University of Norway (UiT) and several other Norwegian research and higher edu-cational institutions. The Nansen Center is a partner in a new Centre for Research-based Innovation (SFI) focusing on Earth observation in the Arctic - Centre for Integrated Remote Sensing and Forecasting for Arctic Operations that is coordinated by UiT.The Nansen Center is a member of Miljøalliansen AS together with eight other Norwegian environmental research insti-tutes. This has lead to increased project co-operation with several other Norwegian en-vironmental institutes and directorates. The Nansen Center contributes with information to several public web-portals, including the miljostatus.no and the Norwegian-Russian environmental portals for the Barents Sea (BarentsPortal).

International ActivitiesCooperation within Europe is an important part of research activities at the Center. In 2015 the Center participated in 11 projects funded by the European Commission, and acted as coordinator for two of these proj-ects. The European Commission launched in 2015 the Copernicus Marine Environment Monitoring Service (CMEMS). The Nansen Center has, in cooperation with the

Meteorological Institute and the Institute of Marine Research, obtained the con-tract to operate the CMEMS Arctic Marine Forecasting Center (AMFC) until 2021. The contract is a major milestone in the devel-opment of operational oceanography at the Center. AMFC delivers weekly ocean and sea ice forecasts based on in situ measurements, satellite Earth observation data and the cou-pled modelling and data assimilation system ToPAZ that has been developed at the Nansen Center over many years.The Center is also coordinating two Nordic Centers of Excellence: EmblA: Ensemble-based data assimilation for environmental monitoring and prediction focusing on de-veloping the operational use of data assimi-lation in environmental research and model-ling (started in 2014) and ARCPATCH: Arctic Climate Predictions: Pathways to Resilient, Sustainable Societies, focusing on responsible and sustainable development under future climate change, which was approved late in 2015. The Nansen Center is a partner in EuroGOOS and leads the Arctic activities (ArcticROOS), which focus on the development and imple-mentation of operational observing and fore-casting systems for the Arctic Ocean. Key in-formation products are distributed through the ArcticROOS portal - www.arctic-roos.org, including daily updates of sea ice extent and concentration derived from Earth observation satellites, providing records of the sea ice vari-ability since 1978. The basic funding has been used to improve the operations of this sea ice information service for the Arctic Ocean.The Nansen Group comprises five interna-tional research centres in Russia, India, China, South Africa and Bangladesh. This research group is a very important research and knowl-edge resource, network and “human capital” for the Nansen Center in Bergen. A total of 220 people including 75 PhD students are em-ployed and affiliated with the Nansen Centers. The cooperation within the Nansen Group has resulted in several joint research projects, joint publications, exchange visits of scientists and students, as well as extensive exchange of knowledge and capacity-building across bor-ders. The Nansen Centers in Russia (NIERSC) and India (NERCI) successfully completed the coordination of their respective major FP7 INCOLAB projects funded by the European Commission – “European-Russian Centre for cooperation in the Arctic and Sub-Arctic envi-ronmental and climate research (EuRUCAS)” and “Indo-European research Facilities for studies on Marine Ecosystem and climate in India (INDO-MARECLIM)” in 2015. In 2015 the Ministry of Education and Research launched their new international strategy, Panorama, for cooperation on higher education and re-search for 2016-2020, which includes four of the countries with international Nansen Centers as well as Japan and Brazil.The foundation, Nansen Scientific Society, where Ola M. Johannessen is the President, has funded 10 Nansen Fellowship stipends at the international Nansen Centers. The foun-

The BoardChairmanProf. Knut Fægri, University of OsloDeputy Chairman Prof. Anne Marit Blokhus, University of BergenMembersDr. Francois Counillon, Scientist, Representative of the employeesDr. Morten Wergeland Hansen, Scientist, Representative of the employees Prof. Helge K. Dahle, Dean, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, University of BergenLiv Holmefjord, Director, Norwegian Directorate of FisheriesBjart Nygaard, GC Rieber ASTore Nepstad, Director, Institute of Marine Research

The Leader TeamManaging DirectorStein Sandven, also Professor II at University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS), Longyearbyen

Mohn-Sverdrup Center for Global Ocean Studies and Operational OceanographyVice-Director Dr. Johnny A. Johannessen, also Professor II at Geophysical Institute, University of Bergen.Research Director Dr. Laurent BertinoPolar & Environmental ResearchResearch Director Dr. Torill Hamre, also Adjunct Professor II at University of BergenGC Rieber Climate InstituteResearch Director Dr. Igor EsauResearch Director Dr. Yongqi Gao, also Professor II at Geophysical Institute, University of BergenInternational Cooperation & MarketingDirector Lasse H. PetterssonAdministration Manager Christina Therese BrunnerEconomyManager Knut HolbaITManager Lars-Gunnar Persson

The ScienTific counciLChairman Prof. Lennart Bengtsson, Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, HamburgMembersDr. Bo Anderssen, Director General, Norwegian Space Centre Dr. Solfrid Sætre Hjøllo, Senior scientist, Institute of Marine ResearchProf. Øystein Hov, Research Director, met.noProf. Grethe Hovelsrud, Professor, Environmental Sociology, University of Nordland, BodøProf. Nils Gunnar Kvamstø, Institute leader, Geophysical Institute, University of BergenDr. Heidi Espedal, Director International Division, University of BergenDr. Robert A. Shuchman, Senior Vice President, Michigan Tech Research Institute, Ann Arbor, U.S.A.Dr. Rune Teigland, TOTAL E&P, NorgeProf. Micheal Tjernström, Meteorological Institute, Stockholm University, SwedenDr. Pierre-Yves Traon, Ifremer, France

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for both Norwegian public administration and business in 2016. This priority is in accordance with the conclusion of the assessment of the Norwegian environmental research institutes made by the Research Council of Norway. The assessment concludes that the Nansen Center is favourable with respect to international cooperation in research and education, the Centre publish very well compared to other environmental research institutes, but have potential for development wrt. demonstrat-ing societal relevance through increased proj-ect activities with public agencies and author-ities. Being the coordinator of the European Copernicus Arctic Marine Forecasting Center until 2021 proves both relevance and societal applications of the research activities per-formed at the Center.An increase in funded research projects is ex-pected during 2016, as well as increased ex-penses also associated with planned project cruise activities in the Fram Strait during sum-mer 2016.

Bergen, April 26th , 2016

Knut Fægri Anne Marit Blokhus Chairman Deputy Chairman

Bjart Nygaard Helge K. DahleLiv Holmefjord Sissel RogneMorten W. Hansen Francois Counillon

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dation has funded several exchange visits to the Nansen Center in Bergen for students and young scientists from China, India, Russia, South Africa and Bangladesh. One PhD candi-date in the Nansen Group defended her PhD. dissertation with support from the Society in 2015. Furthermore, the Society has support-ed publication of 12 scientific papers in in-ternational scientific journals, 17 conference reports and 37 oral presentations at scientific conferences in 2015.

The Svalbard OfficeThe Nansen Center´s office in the Svalbard Research Park, Longyearbyen, contributes to strengthening Arctic research activities at the Center. Several research projects related to oceanography and sea ice research at the Center are conducted in the Svalbard region. One PhD student is permanently located at the office in Longyearbyen and several scien-tists and students have used the office during 2015. This presence is strengthening research cooperation with, and education at, UNIS and other institutions in Svalbard. In cooperation with the Norwegian Scientific Academy for Polar Research (NVP), UNIS and the Nansen Center the interdisciplinary PhD and Post-doc research school Arctic Ocean Governance as a Multifunctional Challenge was hosted at Isdammen in August 2015. The 18 young sci-entists that participated published the results of the research school in the scientific peer review article Assessing the added value of the recent declaration on unregulated fish-ing for sustainable governance of the central Arctic Ocean (Shephard et al, 2016) in the journal Marine Policy.

TerraOrbit AS and CoTo AS The Nansen Center is the owner of the com-panies TerraOrbit AS and COTO AS. The com-mon goal of these companies is to offer ser-vices for monitoring and forecasting of the environment and the oceans. The revenue of these activities will in turn contribute to scientific development in fields of benefit to society and industry. The activities in the two companies have been minimal in 2015.

EconomyThe Nansen Center is a non-profit research foundation. The total project income in 2015 was 64,948 MNOK and the expenses were 63,997 MNOK, which gives a surplus of 0.951 MNOK. The net financial income is 0.578 MNOK. This gives an annual surplus for 2015 of 1,529 MNOK, which is transferred to equity capital. The research activities in 2015 have increased both in turnover and number of employees, however the direct expenses as-sociated with field cruise activities were sig-nificantly less than in 2014. The Center has a strong economy with an eq-uity capital of 33,381 MNOK, after the trans-fer of the surplus for 2015. The project income in 2015 was mainly from the Research Council of Norway, sev-eral Norwegian ministries, the European

Commission (EC) FP7, Horizon2020 and Copernicus programmes, European Space Agency, the Norwegian Space Centre and a small part from research cooperation with oil companies and industrial partners. The GC Rieber Funds has supported a PhD student at the GC Rieber Climate Institute with 750,000 NOK for studying and modelling of air qual-ity in Bergen. The basic funding from the Research Council of Norway was 5.742 MNOK in 2015.The Board confirm that the conditions for continued operations are satisfactory accord-ing to §3-3a in the accounting legislation. The annual accounts are made under this assump-tion, which is consistent with the long-term strategy and prognosis for the development of the Center. The Center has a strong econ-omy.Financial risks are primarily associated with foreign currency exchange rates. 36% of the project income is in a foreign currency, pri-marily Euro. The policy at the Center is to continuously assess the need for currency hedging. The Center does not have any loans. Access liquidity is according to board deci-sion kept at a bank account. The clients are mainly public national or foreign institutions with whom the Center have had a long last-ing business relation over many years, accord-ingly the risks associated with their credit are limited. The liquidity risk is also regarded to be very limited.

Prospects for 2016Research project applications in 2016 will fo-cus on relevant open calls to be announced by the Research Council of Norway, EC Horizon2020 and Copernicus programmes, and tenders from the European Space Agency and other funding agencies. Several sched-uled H2020 calls in 2016 are particularly rel-evant for the expertise of the Nansen Center. Significant efforts are foreseen in the devel-opment of new applications and consortia both as project coordinator, work package leader and project partner in H2020 project applications in 2016. Increased framework for support and funding (PES2020 and STIM-EU) from the Research Council of Norway is in this respect an efficient and essential instrument. The Center also plans to apply for research and development projects of high relevance

Distribution of sources of project funding in 2015.

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EU Copernicus Arctic Marine Forecasting Centre (AMFC)The Copernicus Marine Environmental Monitoring Services (CMEMS) was kicked off on 1st May 2015, managed by Mercator Océan on behalf of the EU. The Copernicus programme is a cornerstone of the European Union’s efforts to monitor the Earth and its ecosystems, whilst ensuring that its citizens are prepared and protected in the case of crises and natural or man-made disasters. Copernicus is “Europe’s eyes on Earth”. Within CMEMS, the Nansen Center leads the Arctic Marine Forecasting Center (ARC MFC) in partnership with MET Norway and IMR. NERSC further develops the TOPAZ forecast-ing and reanalysis system, which is exploited operationally at MET Norway, while the IMR is involved in the validation of the provided services. As such, the ARC MFC represents the most intense collaborative effort between these Norwegian institutions with a budget of 4 million Euros (corresponding to 24 person-years) over the 3 years of the first phase of CMEMS. The ARC MFC provides four main products, with the 3-dimensional ocean physical and biogeochemical models used both in short-term forecasts (up to 10 days) as well as in reanalysis mode over the entire satellite era. It means the following: if anyone asks the EU where the Arctic sea ice will be tomorrow, the official answer will come from a system de-veloped over the last decades at the Nansen Center. In 2017, an Arctic wave forecast will be added to the operational service deliv-ered by MET Norway (see Figure 1). In addi-tion NERSC contributes a SAR-based sea ice remote-sensing product to the Ocean and Sea

Ice Thematic Assembly Center (OSI TAC), another CMEMS el-ement lead by MET Norway. CMEMS is an important milestone in a long series of EU funded research and development projects, in-cluding DIADEM, TOPAZ, Mersea-Strand1, MERSEA IP, MyOcean and MyOcean2, by taking up their developments into a common European operational service. CMEMS relies heavily on the quality of the models for ocean, sea ice and ecosystem, as well as efficient assimilation of Earth Observations data. CMEMS offers more than just delivery data products, it also entails visualization service, regular product validation efforts, a 24/7 operational monitor-ing of the production chain and a service desk answering questions and keeping users informed of up-coming changes and new service elements, and expansion of new satellite data sources from e.g. the European Sentinel satellites. CMEMS is designed to serve many public, commercial and scientific purposes including major EU policies such as the Marine Strategy Framework Directive, combating pollution, protection of marine species, maritime safety and routing, sustainable exploitation of ocean resources, climate and weather monitoring. CMEMS will strive to keep the operational service at the forefront of research and mo-tivates the Nansen Center to carry on further methodological developments that will con-tribute to the evolution of the CMEMS ser-vices. Relevant publications:• Tonani, Maria; Balmaseda, Magdalena; Bertino,

Laurent; Blockley, Ed; Brassington, Gary; Davidson, Fraser; Drillet, Yann; Hogan, Pat;

Kuragano, Tsurane; Lee, Tong; Mehra, Avichal; Paranathara, Francis; Tanajura, Clemente A.S.; Wang, Hui. Status and future of global and re-gional ocean prediction systems. Journal of op-erational oceanography. Publisher: The Institute of Marine Engineering, Science & Technology 2015, Volume 8.(2)

• Martin, M.J.; Balmaseda, M.; Bertino, Laurent; Brasseur, P.; Brassington, B.; Cummings, J.; Fujii, Y.; Lea, D.J.; Lellouche, J.-M.; Mogensen, K.; Oke, P.R.; Smith, G.C.; Testut, C.-E.; Waters, J.; Weaver, A.T.; Waagbø, Geir Arne. Status and future of data assimilation in operational oceanography. Journal of operational oceanography. Publisher: The Institute of Marine Engineering, Science & Technology 2015, Volume 8. Suppl. 1. s.28-48

• Gehlen, M.; Barciela, R.; Bertino, Laurent; Brasseur, P.; Butenschön, M.; Chai, F.; Crise, A.; Drillet, Y.; Ford, D.; Lavoie, D.; Lehodey, P.; Perruche, C.; Samuelsen, Annette; Simon, Ehouarn. Building the capacity for forecast-ing marine biogeochemistry and ecosystems: recent advances and future developments. Journal of operational oceanography. Publisher: The Institute of Marine Engineering, Science & Technology 2015, Volume 8. Suppl. 1.

A North Atlantic Coupled Physical-Biological Ocean ModelA combined state-parameter estimation was performed in a coupled physical-biological model (HYCOM-NORWECOM: Samuelsen et al., 2015) for the North-Atlantic and the Arctic oceans. The study was part of the production of a 4-year pilot reanalysis product for the EU FP7-projects MyOcean and GreenSeas. The state-parameter estimation was performed by assimilating temperature, sea-level anomaly, sea-ice and satellite-derived sea-surface chlorophyll using the Deterministic ensemble Kalman filter (DEnKF). The states of the 11-component NPZD (nutrient, phy-toplankton, zooplankton, detritus) model, NORWECOM, as well as the mortality terms for the two phytoplankton and two zooplank-ton classes were also estimated over a full annual cycle. The mortality parameters were selected for optimization because they are

Figure 1: Schematic information flow within the Copernicus Arctic Marine Forecasting Center. The full arrows represent the operational data dependencies in ToPAZ at the start of the service and the dashed lines those that will be added in the course of the first phase.

sc ience repor t fo r 2015

Figure 2: Regions of similar plankton dynamics identified from the clustering analysis of the optimized parameters.

Satellite-derived Sea ice Lead Fraction in the Arctic OceanLeads within consolidated sea ice control heat exchange between the ocean and the at-mosphere during winter, thus constituting an important climate parameter. These narrow elongated features occur when sea ice is frac-turing under the action of wind and currents, reducing the local mechanical strength of the ice cover, which in turn impact the sea ice drift pattern. This creates a high demand for a high quality lead fraction (LF) data set for sea ice model validation, initialization, and for the assimilation of such data in regional ice-ocean models. In this context, an available LF data set retrieved from satellite passive microwave observations (Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer Earth Observing System, AMSR-E) is of great value, which has been providing pan-Arctic light and cloud-independent daily coverage since 2002. In a study performed at the Nansen Center errors in the data set are quantified using accurate LF estimates re-trieved from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images employing a threshold technique (Figure 4). A consistent overestimation of LF by a factor of 2–4 is found in the AMSR-E LF product. It is shown that a simple adjustment of the upper tie point used in the method to estimate the LF can reduce the pixel-wise er-ror by a factor of 2 on average. Applying such an adjustment to the full data set may thus significantly increase the quality and value of the original data set.Relevant publication:• Ivanova, N., Rampal, P., and Bouillon, S.: Error as-

sessment of satellite-derived lead fraction in the Arctic, The Cryosphere, 10, 585-595.

Model Errors in Data Assimilation One of the main aspects that lead to the suc-cess of the Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) was its ability to account for model errors while “perfect model” data assimilation methods had to blame all the discrepancies on either the observations or the initial state. Considerable attention has been drawn on the negative effects of representing obser-vation errors by random perturbations, and their partial remediation by square root analysis schemes. However, limited efforts have been devoted to eliminate the need for simulated random model perturbations in the EnKF. Raanes et al. (2015) have therefore sug-gested three methods, which outperform the existing ones in either a linear or a non-linear

known to be uncertain in NPZD models and the parameters were allowed to vary in both space and time. Distinct spatial and temporal patterns occurred for all the parameters. By clustering the parameters, regions of similar plankton dynamics could be identified (Figure 2). In some areas, for example in the Gulf Stream region, the parameter exceeded what is commonly considered realistic values, in-dicating that the present model formulation cannot correctly describe this area. In the high-latitude regions, the mortality param-eters retain realistic values and the modelled chlorophyll values were improved, not unex-pectedly, since the model was originally de-veloped for the Northern regions. The resulting reanalysis produced improved model estimates during parameter optimiza-tion; it was also improved compared to inde-pendent in-situ chlorophyll. In 2010, the op-timized parameters from the previous period was used in the simulation, the results for this year yields improved results compared to the free run, but the error were larger than dur-ing the estimation of parameters. However, it should be kept in mind that there was an unusually large phytoplankton bloom in the North Atlantic in 2010. The assimilation had a small impact on nutrients, but no system-atic improvement or deterioration could be found, except at around 1000 meters depth where the initial adjustments during the as-similation caused an offset in nutrients that slowly reduced over time.Relevant publications:• Simon, E., Samuelsen, A., Bertino, L., Mouysset,

S., 2015. Experiences in multiyear combined state-parameter estimation with an ecosystem model of the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans using the Ensemble Kalman Filter. J. Mar. Syst., 152, 1-17.

• Samuelsen, A., Hansen, C., Wehde, H., 2015. Tuning and assessment of the HYCOM-NORWECOM V2.1 biogeochemical modeling system for the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans. Geosci. Model Dev. 8, 2187–2202.

Sea Ice Modelling: neXtSIM and neXtSIM-FIn 2015, a new high resolution sea-ice fore-casting platform named neXtSIM-F was devel-

oped, based on the neXtSIM sea ice model. neXtSIM is a Lagrangian sea ice model that uses a new mechanical framework (the elas-to-brittle rheology) to simulate the complex dynamical response of sea ice to the winds and ocean currents, the occurrence of cracks, leads and ridges in the sea ice pack. The plat-form has been set up to cover the Barents and Kara Seas at a 3km horizontal resolution (Figure 3). neXtSIM-F has been running in near-real time over 9 months from fall 2015, using as forcing the weather forecasts provid-ed by ECMWF and ocean forecasts provided by the Copernicus Marine and Environmental Monitoring System (ARC MFC). The neXtSIM-F forecasts illustrations and description of the platform are available on the web at https://nextsim.nersc.no. Near-real time evaluation of the neXtSIM-F performance with respect to sea ice drift forecast was conducted against the OSISAF sea ice drift observation and can be viewed at ftp://ftp.nersc.no/pub/Philipp/forecast_eval.In the meantime, the development of neXt-SIM has reached a new level, with the inclu-sion of a thermodynamic model in addition to the dynamic model, making neXtSIM ready to be coupled to an ocean/atmospheric model. The performance of neXtSIM with respect to sea ice deformation scaling properties, drift statistics, sea ice extent and volume has been assessed and the results compiled for report-ing in a scientific publication.Also, experimental work has been done on water wave transmission by an array of float-ing disks. This work is an important contribu-tion to the development of the wave-in-ice (WIM) model we are pushing at NERSC, and

towards its future in-clusion into the neXt-SIM sea ice model in order to study sea ice-ocean processes in the Marginal Ice Zone. Relevant publications:• Bennetts, LG.; Williams, T.: Water wave transmis-sion by an array of float-ing disks. Proceedings of the Royal Society. Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 2015, Volume 471. • Bouillon, S.; Rampal, P.: Presentation of the dynamical core of neXt-SIM, a new sea ice model. Ocean Modelling 2015, Volume 91.

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Figure 3: Volume ratio of ridged ice over the neXtSIM-F domain on the third of April 2016 as predicted from the first of April. The ridge ratio is high where ice is often compressed against the coast, and low in areas where the ice tends to be landfast or protected between islands.

Figure 4. (a) A subset of the original SAR image (backscatter) on the 8 March 2009; (b) respective classified SAR image (red – lead, blue – ice) with (a) as background; (c) AMSR-E lead fraction in per cent with (a) as background.

toy model, or in both. Figure 5 shows for ex-ample how the different methods perform in the non-linear Lorenz-96 case, but further testing in a high-dimensional system would be necessary to bring the method to an op-erational setup. Relevant publications:• Raanes P. A. Carrassi and L. Bertino. Extending

the square root method to account for model noise in the ensemble Kalman filter. Mon. Weather. Rev., 143: 3857–3873, 2015.

• Mitchell L, Carrassi A. Accounting for model er-ror due to unresolved scales within ensemble Kalman filtering. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society. 2015, 141(689).

Polar Acoustics and OceanographyThe Polar acoustic and oceanography group (AOG) conducts applied and basic ocean and acoustic research based on the state of

the art methodology, instrumentation and platforms in the Arctic Ocean. AOG aims to play an active role in the development and exploitation of an inte-grated Arctic Observing System (iAOS), which includes a multipur-pose acoustic system. This goal was described in the community pa-per by Mikhalevsky et al. 2015. To achieve the goal, the AOG took a leading role in devel-opment and submis-sion of the INTAROS- Integrated Arctic Observing System - proposal to BG-09 call

in HORIZON 2020 (granted in 2016). Since 2005, acoustic observing technol-ogy has been implemented and used by the Nansen Center in combination with other observations and models to better under-stand the ocean and sea ice environment in the Fram Strait. Evolving from a single track acoustic system deployed in 2008, an extended acoustic system was successfully deployed in 2014 for two years operation in the Fram Strait under the UNDER-ICE NFR project with co-funding from GDF SUEZ (Figure 6). Preparing for the data processing and analy-sis in 2016 a detailed technical description of the existing processing procedures of the acoustic data has been provided along with a new metadata structure for acoustic data (Geyer et al. 2015). The processing proce-dures are undergoing revision to facilitate

for the new meta-data structure and the new receiver technology used in UNDER-ICE experi-ment.The main scien-tific activity in 2015 has been to pub-lish results from previous experi-ments, ACOBAR, DAMOCLES and WIFAR projects. Six manuscripts were developed and submitted to inter-national referee journals. These pub-lications documents step by step the production chain of tomographic data from pre-processing of measured travel times to the inver-sion of those to depth-range ocean

temperature observation, and finally how the acoustically derived mean temperatures can be used to validate ice-ocean models. Passive acoustic data from drifting ice sta-tions were analysed and it was fund that cavitation noise from icebreakers operating in heavy ice dominates the soundscape oc-casionally. A Master Thesis Estimating fin whale distribution from ambient noise spec-tra using Bayesian inversion (Menze, 2015) was completed based on data from the DAMOCLES experiment. Relevant publications:• Mikhalevsky, PN.; Sagen, H.; Worcester, PF.;

Baggeroer, AB.; Orcutt, J.; Moore, SE.; Lee, CM.; Vigness-Raposa, KJ.; Freitag, L.; Arrott, M.; Atakan, K.; Beszczynska-Möller, A.; Duda, TF.; Dushaw, BD.; Gascard, JC.; Gavrilov, AN.; Keers, H.; Morozov, AK.; Munk, WH.; Rixen, M.; Sandven, S.; Skarsoulis, E.; Stafford, KM.; Vernon, F.; Yuen, MY.. Multipurpose Acoustic Networks in the Integrated Arctic Ocean Observing System. Arctic 2015. Volume 68. (5).

• Menze, S. Estimating fin whale distribution from ambient noise spectra using Bayesian inver-sion. Master in Marine Ecosystems and Climate 117 (2015), Univeristy of Bergen.

• Geyer, F.; Yamakawa, A.; Dzieciuch, M.; Sagen, H.. Processing of acoustic tomography data in the ACOBAR and UNDER-ICE experiments and development of new metadata structure for acoustic moorings. NERSC Technical Report no. 361. Bergen: Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center, 2015, 20 p.

Regional Sea Level VariabilityOne of the activities within the ocean and coastal remote sensing group is sea level research. The use of remote sensing such as radar altimetry is an obvious element of such research, but also the regional ocean density and circulation changes is in fo-cus. The oceanographic knowledge at the Nansen Center and in Bergen in general is put to use in studies of regional sea level variability and change. In 2015 a major ef-fort to provide Norway with updated local and regional sea level projections was com-pleted. Changes to mean sea level and/or sea level extremes (e.g., storm surges) will have impact on coastal infrastructure and lead to future changes in the coastal zone. These changes represent a changing expo-sure or risk to our society. The report Sea Level Change for Norway (Simpson et al., 2015) was produced in collaboration be-tween the Norwegian Mapping Authority and the Nansen Center, under the auspices of the Bjerknes Centre For Climate Research in Bergen. The report synthesizes our under-standing of past and present observed sea level changes for Norway, as well as pro-vides sea level projections up until 2100 for every coastal municipality. The primary fo-cus is changes to mean sea level, but updat-ed return heights for each coastal municipal-ity in Norway, is also provided. The regional sea level projections are based on findings from the 5th IPCC Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate

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Figure 6: The red pentagons indicate the UNDER-ICE acoustic monitor-ing system deployed by NERSC in September 2014, and the green trian-gles are heavily equipped oceanographic moorings deployed for UiB and the NICE project. Each of the five acoustic moorings carry 10 hydrophone modules, and two of the moorings (U2 and U5) have acoustic sources. The ten hydrophone modules communicates with the controller unit via inductive modem. This system will provide acoustic measurements along 8 tracks. Furthermore, the acoustic moorings integrate oceanographic in-struments to help with interpretation of the acoustic observations.

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Change (IPCC), and the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) output, with regional adjustments for verti-cal land uplift and gravitational changes due to ocean circulation that has not been con-sidered before. Projected ensemble mean 21st century relative sea level changes in Norway are, depending on location, from -0.10 to 0.30 m for RCP2.6, 0.00 to 0.35 m for RCP 4.5, and 0.15 to 0.55 m for RCP8.5 scenarios (Figure 7). The projected pattern of relative sea level change is governed by the vertical uplift rates and can differ as much as 0.50 m from place to place. The projections presented in the report are given with corresponding 5 to 95% model ranges, which are defined as the likely range in AR5 (66% likelihood). The results was also included in the Norwegian Climate report, Klima i Norge 2100 (Hanssen-Bauer et al., 2015), which is currently the most com-prehensive update on knowledge of future climate change in Norway. The work is an important part of the Nansen Centers mis-sion as a national environmental institute (“miljøinstitutt”) to provide useful scientific information to the national governance and public, and is followed up in new research proposals and in the group’s research on new methods and tools exploiting satellite remote sensing. Relevant publications:• Simpson, M.J.R., J.E.Ø. Nilsen, O.R. Ravndal,

K. Breili, H. Sande, H.P. Kierulf, H. Steffen, E. Jansen, M. Carson and O. Vestøl (2015). Sea Level Change for Norway: Past and Present Observations and Projections to 2100. Norwegian Centre for Climate Services report

1/2015, ISSN 2387-3027, Oslo, Norway. 155 pp. • Hanssen-Bauer, I., E.J. Førland, I. Haddeland,

H. Hisdal, S. Mayer, A. Nesje, J.E.Ø. Nilsen, S. Sandven, A.B. Sandø, A. Sorteberg og B. Ådlandsvik (editors) et al. (2015). Klima i Norge 2100. Norwegian Centre for Climate Services report 2/2015, ISSN 2387-3027, Oslo. 203 pp.

Apparent Hiatus in Global Warming - Dynamical Sources and ModellingIn February 2015, one had an opportunity to celebrate 30 years’ anniversary of the global monthly averaged air surface tempera-ture being at or below the long-term mean value according to the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Since the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) defines the climatological standard normal as the 30 years mean, it is now for-mally certified that the Earth’s climate has warmed. The warming however has not been monotonically steady. Although 2015 was a record-breaking year with the global annually averaged temperature anomaly of +0.46°C [NOAA, 2015], for more than a dec-ade over 1998-2014, the temperatures did not increase significantly. This period has been called the apparent hiatus in global warming.The search for physical and dynamical mechanisms for this hiatus caused hot de-bates among scientists, politicians and the general public. Stephen Outten and Peter Thorne of the Nansen Center, led a team to examine the hiatus mechanisms using two 30-member ensembles from the Norwegian Earth System Model (NorESM) [Outten et al., 2015 and Throne et al., 2015]. The en-sembles’ surface temperature trends were found to be statistically indistinguishable

over 1998–2012 despite differences in the prescribed forcings (Figure 8). According to NorESM, there is thus no evidence that forcing errors play a significant role in ex-plaining why global climate models failed to reproduce the hiatus. In general, obser-vations are towards the lower bound of the ensembles or, for some observational esti-mates and regions, outside of it. The excep-tion is the Arctic, where the observations are close to the upper ensemble bounds. Those NorESM ensemble members that ex-hibit Nino3.4 Sea Surface Temperature (SST) trends similar to the observed trends also exhibit comparable tropical and to some ex-tent global mean trends, supporting a role for El Nino-Southern Oscillation in explain-ing the hiatus. Several ensemble members capture the marked seasonality observed in Northern Hemisphere mid-latitude tem-perature trends, with cooling in the winter-time and warming in the remaining seasons. Thus while no single ensemble member reproduced all of the observed features of the hiatus, NorESM did reproduce all of the features in different members, suggesting that the model is capable of simulating the hiatus.Relevant publications:• The data for NOAA-Global Temp with reference

period 1981-2010 from “State of the Climate in 2015“, BAMS, 97(8), August 2016.

• Outten, S., P. Thorne, I. Bethke, and Ø. Seland (2015), Investigating the recent apparent hiatus in surface temperature increases: 1. Construction of two 30-member Earth System Model ensembles, J. Geophys. Res. Atm., 120.

• Thorne, P., S. Outten, I. Bethke, and Ø. Seland (2015), Investigating the recent apparent hiatus in surface temperature increases: 2. Comparison of model ensembles to observa-tional estimates, J. Geophys. Res. Atm., 120.

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Figure 8. Comparison of linear trends over of air surface temperature for 1998–2012 for Cowtan and Way and Berkeley (top row), and for each ensemble, the two members, which have correla-tions and RMSD within the top five of agreement (field correlations and RMSD values are shown below each model panel).

Figure 7: Projected ensemble mean regional relative sea level change (m) over the period 1986–2005 to 2081–2100 for RCP8.5 scenario.

Extra-tropical Ocean Warming and Wintertime Arctic Sea Ice Cover Variability Despite the fact that the Arctic Oscillation (AO) has reached a more neutral state and a global-warming hiatus has occurred in winter since the late 1990s, the Arctic sea ice cover (ASIC) still shows a pronounced decrease. Li et al. (2015) reveals a close con-nection (R = 0.5) between the extratropical sea surface temperature (ET-SST) and ASIC in winter from 1994 to 2013 (Figure 9). In response to one positive (negative) unit of deviation in the ET-SST pattern, the ASIC de-creases (increases) in the Barents–Kara Seas and Hudson Bay (the Baffin Bay and Bering Sea) by 100–400 km2. This relationship might be maintained because of the impact of warming extratropical oceans on the po-lar vortex. Positive mid-latitude SST anoma-lies in the North Pacific and North Atlantic (around 40°N) strengthen the equatorward planetary wave propagation, whereas nega-tive high-latitude SST anomalies weaken the upward planetary wave propagation from the lower troposphere to the stratosphere. The former indicates a strengthening of the poleward meridional eddy momentum flux, and the latter implies a weakening of the poleward eddy heat flux, which favours an intensified upper-level polar night jet and a colder polar vortex, implying a stronger-than-normal polar vortex. Consequently, an anomalous cyclone emerges over the east-ern Arctic, changing the ASIC by modulating the mean meridional heat flux. A possible reason for the long-term changes in the re-lationship between the ET-SST and ASIC is also discussed.Relevant publication:Li F., Wang H.J., Gao Y.Q. (2015): Extratropcial

Ocean Warming and Winter Arctic Sea Ice Cover since the 1990s. Journal of Climate, 28, 5510-5522.

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norwegian Science index-nVi PuBLicaTionS (49)Abish, B., Porathur Vareed Joseph, and Ola M. Johannessen. 2015. “Climate Change in the Subtropical Jetstream during 1950–2009.” Advances in Atmospheric Sciences 32 (1). Science Press: 140–48.Ablain, Michaël, Anny Cazenave, Gilles Larnicol, Magdalena Alonso Balmaseda, Paolo P. Cipollini, Yannice Faugère, Maria Joana Fernandes, Johnny A. Johannessen et al. 2015. “Improved Sea Level Record over the Satellite Altimetry Era (1993-2010) from the Climate Change Initiative Project.” Ocean Science 11 (1). European Geosciences Union: 67–82.Bennetts, Luke G., and Timothy Williams. 2015. “Water Wave Transmission by an Array of Floating Disks.” Proceedings of the Royal Society. Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 471 (2173). doi:rspa.2014.0698.Bocquet, Marc, Patrick Raanes, and A. Hannart. 2015. “Expanding the Validity of the Ensemble Kalman Filter without the Intrinsic Need for Inflation.” Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics 22 (6): 645–62.Bodeker, G. E., S. Bojinski, D. Cimini, R. J. Dirksen, M. Haeffelin, J. W. Hannigan, D. F. Hurst, … Anna Christina Mikalsen, Peter Thorne et al. 2015. “Reference Upper-Air Observations for Climate: From Concept to Reality.” Bulletin of The American Meteorological Society - (BAMS). American Meteorological Society. doi:BAMS-D-14-00072.1.Bouillon, Sylvain, and Pierre Rampal. 2015a. “On Producing Sea Ice Deformation Data Sets from SAR-Derived Sea Ice Motion.” The Cryosphere 9 (2). National Snow and Ice Data Center: 663–73.Bouillon, Sylvain, and Pierre Rampal. 2015b. “Presentation of the Dynamical Core of neXtSIM, a New Sea Ice Model.” Ocean Modelling 91. Elsevier Science: 23–37.Chen, Linling, Xavier Fettweis, Erlend Moster Knudsen, and Ola M. Johannessen. 2015. “Impact of Cyclonic and Anticyclonic Activity on Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Mass Balance Variation during 1980–2013.” International Journal of Climatology. doi:joc.4565.

publ ica t ions in 2015

Daewel, Ute, Corinna Schrum, and Alok Kumar Gupta. 2015. “The Predictive Potential of Early Life Stage Models (IBMs): An Example for Atlantic Cod Gadus Morhua in the North Sea.” Marine Ecology Progress Series 534: 199–219.El Gharamti, Mohamad, Boujemaa Ait-El-Fquih, and Ibrahim Hoteit. 2015b. “An Iterative Ensemble Kalman Filter with One-Step-Ahead Smoothing for State-Parameters Estimation of Contaminant Transport Models.” Journal of Hydrology 527. Elsevier Science: 442–57.El Gharamti, Mohamad, Boujemaa Ait-El-Fquih, and Ibrahim Hoteit. 2015a. “A One-Step-Ahead Smoothing-Based Joint Ensemble Kalman Filter for State-Parameter Estimation of Hydrological Models.” Lecture Notes in Computer Science 8964. Springer Verlag: 207–14.El Gharamti, Mohamad, Youssef Marzouk, Xun Huan, and Ibrahim Hoteit. 2015. “A Greedy Approach for Placement of Subsurface Aquifer Wells in an Ensemble Filtering Framework.” Lecture Notes in Computer Science 8964. Springer Verlag: 301–9.Esau, Igor, and A. Chernokulsky. 2015a. “Convective Cloud Fields in the Atlantic Sector of the Arctic: Satellite and Ground-Based Oservations.” Izvestiya, Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics/Izvestiya Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk - Fizika Atmosfery I Okeana 51 (9): 1007–20.Ferreira, Ana Sofia de Araüjo, H. Hátún, Francois Counillon, M. R. Payne, and A. W. Visser. 2015. “Synoptic-Scale Analysis of Mechanisms Driving Surface Chlorophyll Dynamics in the North Atlantic.” Biogeosciences 12 (11). European Geosciences Union/Copernicus GmbH: 3641–53.Gehlen, M., R. Barciela, Laurent Bertino, P. Brasseur, M. Butenschön, F. Chai, A. Crise, … Annette Samuelsen, Ehouarn Simon, et al. 2015. “Building the Capacity for Forecasting Marine Biogeochemistry and Ecosystems: Recent Advances and Future Developments.” Journal of Operational Oceanography. Publisher: The Institute of Marine Engineering, Science & Technology 8. doi:1755876X.2015.1022350.Holt, Jason; Schrum, Corinna; Cannaby, Heather; Daewel, Ute; Allen, Icarus; Artioli, Yuri; Bopp, Laurent; Butenschon, Momme; Fach, Bettina A.; Harle, James; Pushpadas, Dhanya; Salihoglu, Baris; Wakelin, Sarah L. 2016. Potential impacts of climate change on the primary production of regional seas: A comparative analysis of five European seas. Progress in Oceanography 2016, Volume 140. p. 91-115.Hoteit, Ibrahim, Dinh-Tuan Pham, Mohamad El Gharamti, and Xiaodong Luo. 2015. “Mitigating Observation Perturbation Sampling Errors in the Stochastic EnKF.” Monthly Weather Review 143 (7): 2918–36.Ivanova, Natalia, Leif Toudal Pedersen, Rasmus Tage Tonboe, Stefan Kern, Georg Heygster, Thomas Lavergne, Atle Mcdonald Sørensen, et al. 2015. “Inter-Comparison and Evaluation of Sea Ice Algorithms: Towards Further Identification of Challenges and Optimal Approach Using Passive Microwave Observations.” The Cryosphere 9 (5). National Snow and Ice Data Center: 1797–1817.Kędra, Monika, Charlotte Moritz, Emily S. Choy, Carmen David, Renate Degen, Steven Duerksen, Ingrid H. Ellingsen, …. Annette Samuelsen et al. 2015. “Status and Trends in the Structure of Arctic Benthic Food Webs.” Polar Research 34 (2015). Norsk Polarinstitutt. doi:polar.v34.23775.Kern, Stefan, Kirill Khvorostovsky, Henriette Skourup, Eero Rinne, Zahra S. Parsakhoo, Vera Djepa, Peter Wadhams, and Stein Sandven. 2015. “The Impact of Snow Depth, Snow Density and Ice Density on Sea Ice Thickness Retrieval from Satellite

Figure 9: (a) Leading EOF mode of Arctic sea ice cover (ASIC; north of 50°N) anomalies during 1994–2013 DJF, which accounts for 19% of the total ASIC variability. The EOF in (b) is the same as that in (a), except for extratropical SST (ET-SST; 20°N–70°N), for which it accounts for 26% of the total variability. (c) Principal component time series of the EOF-1 of ASIC (ASIC PC-1; black dashed line) and ET-SST (ET-SST PC-1; blue solid line) in units of standard deviations. (d) Principal component time series of EOF-1 of ASIC (ASIC PC-1; black dashed line) and sea ice cover aver-aged over Barents–Kara Seas (SIC-BaKa, blue solid line, in the domain of 70°–80°N, 30°–80°E), together with sea ice cover averaged over the Bering Sea (SIC-Bering, red solid line, in the domain of 56.5°–66.5°N, 160°E–150°W) in units of standard deviations. All data and indices are detrended.

Radar Altimetry: Results from the ESA-CCI Sea Ice ECV Project Round Robin Exercise.” The Cryosphere, no. 9. National Snow and Ice Data Center: 37–52.Korosov, Anton, Francois Counillon, and Johnny Andre Johannessen. 2015. “Monitoring the Spreading of the Amazon Freshwater Plume by MODIS, SMOS, Aquarius, and TOPAZ.” Journal of Geophysical Research - Oceans 120 (1). American Geophysical Union (AGU): 268–83.Le Traon, P-Y, D. Antoine, A. Bentamy, H. Bonekamp, L. A. Breivik, B. Chapron, G. Corlett, …. J.A. Johannessen … et al. 2015. “Use of Satellite Observations for Operational Oceanography: Recent Achievements and Future Prospects.” Journal of Operational Oceanography. Publisher: The Institute of Marine Engineering, Science & Technology 8. doi:1755876X.2015.1022050.Levinsen, Joanna, Kirill Khvorostovsky, Francesca Ticconi, Andrew Shepherd, Rene Forsberg, Louise Sørensen, A. Muir, et al. 2015. “ESA Ice Sheet CCI: Derivation of the Optimal Method for Surface Elevation Change Detection of the Greenland Ice Sheet – Round Robin Results.” International Journal of Remote Sensing 36 (2). Taylor & Francis: 551–73.Li, Dan, Gabriel G. Katul, and Sergej Zilitinkevich. 2015. “Revisiting the Turbulent Prandtl Number in an Idealized Atmospheric Surface Layer.” Journal of Atmospheric Sciences 72 (6): 2394–2410.Li, Fei, Huijun Wang, and Yongqi Gao. 2015a. “Extratropical Ocean Warming and Winter Arctic Sea Ice Cover since the 1990s.” Journal of Climate 28 (14). American Meteorological Society: 5510–22.Li, Fei, Huijun Wang, and Yongqi Gao. 2015b. “The Change in Sea Ice Cover Is Responsible for Non-Uniform Variation in Winter Temperature over East Asia.” Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters 8 (6): 376–82.Li, Fei, Huijun Wang, and Yongqi Gao. 2015c. “The Projected Siberian High in CMIP5 Models.” Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters 8 (4): 179–84.Martin, M. J., M. Balmaseda, Laurent Bertino, P. Brasseur, B. Brassington, J. Cummings, Y. Fujii, et al. 2015. “Status and Future of Data Assimilation in Operational Oceanography.” Journal of Operational Oceanography. Publisher: The Institute of Marine Engineering, Science & Technology 8: 28–48.Mikhalevsky, Peter N., Hanne Sagen, Peter Francis Worcester, Arthur B. Baggeroer, John Orcutt, Sue E. Moore, Craig M. Lee, … Stein Sandven ….et al. 2015. “Multipurpose Acoustic Networks in the Integrated Arctic Ocean Observing System.” Arctic 68 (5). Arctic Institute of North America: 1–17.Mitchell, Lewis, and Alberto Carrassi. 2015. “Accounting for Model Error due to Unresolved Scales within Ensemble Kalman Filtering.” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 141 (689): 1417–28.Morozov, Evgeny Aleksandrovich, Dmitry Kondrik, Anastasiia Fedorova, Dmitry Pozdnyakov, Dangling Lingzis Tang, and Lasse H. Pettersson. 2015. “A Spaceborne Assessment of Cyclone Impacts on Barents Sea Surface Temperature and Chlorophyll.” International Journal of Remote Sensing 36 (7). Taylor & Francis: 1921–41.Outten, Stephen, Peter Thorne, Ingo Bethke, and Øyvind Seland. 2015. “Investigating the Recent Apparent Hiatus in Surface Temperature Increases: 1. Construction of Two 30-Member Earth System Model Ensembles.” Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres 120 (17). American Geophysical Union (AGU): 8575–96.Pozdnyakov, Dmitry, and Dmitry Petrenko. 2015. “Spaceborne Quantitative Assessment of Primary Production Variations in the Arctic Ocean over the Previous Decade.” International Archives of

Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences XL-7/W3. International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing: 1041–48.Raanes, Patrick. 2016. “On the ensemble Rauch-Tung-Striebel smoother and its equivalence to the ensemble Kalman smoother”. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 2016, Volume 142.(696) s. 1259-1264.Raanes, Patrick, Alberto Carrassi, and Laurent Bertino. 2015. “Extending the Square Root Method to Account for Additive Forecast Noise in Ensemble Methods.” Monthly Weather Review 143 (10): 3857–73.Raj, Roshin Pappukutty, Leon Chafik, Jan Even Øie Nilsen, Tor Eldevik, and Issufo Halo. 2015. “The Lofoten Vortex of the Nordic Seas.” Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers 96. Elsevier Science: 1–14.Samuelsen, Annette, Cecilie Hansen, and Henning Wehde. 2015. “Tuning and Assessment of the HYCOM-NORWECOM V2.1 Biogeochemical Modeling System for the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans.” Geoscientific Model Development 8 (7). Copernicus GmbH: 2187–2202.Simon, Ehouarn, Annette Samuelsen, Laurent Bertino, and Sandrine Mouysset. 2015. “Experiences in Multiyear Combined State-Parameter Estimation with an Ecosystem Model of the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans Using the Ensemble Kalman Filter.” Journal of Marine Systems 152. Elsevier Science: 1–17.Skrunes, Stine, Camilla Brekke, Torbjørn Eltoft, and Vladimir Kudryavtsev. 2015. “Comparing near-Coincident C- and X-Band SAR Acquisitions of Marine Oil Spills.” IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing: A Publication of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society 53 (4): 1958–75.Smirnova, Julia E., Pavel A. Golubkin, Leonid Bobylev, Elizaveta V. Zabolotskikh, and Bertrand Chapron. 2015. “Polar Low Climatology over the Nordic and Barents Seas Based on Satellite Passive Microwave Data.” Geophysical Research Letters 42 (13). American Geophysical Union: 5603–9.Suo, Lingling, Yongqi Gao, Dong Guo, Jiping Liu, Huijun Wang, and Ola M. Johannessen. 2015. “Atmospheric Response to the Autumn Sea-Ice Free Arctic and Its Detectability.” Climate Dynamics. Springer Verlag, 1–16.Thorne, Peter, Stephen Outten, Ingo Bethke, and Øyvind Seland. 2015. “Investigating the Recent Apparent Hiatus in Surface Temperature Increases: 2. Comparison of Model Ensembles to Observational Estimates.” Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres 120 (17). American Geophysical Union (AGU): 8597–8620.Tolstykh, Mikhail A., Jean-Francois Geleyn, Evgeny Mikhailovich Volodin, Nikolay N. Bogoslovskii, Roman M. Vilfand, Dmitry B. Kiktev, T. V. Krasjuk, …. Igor Esau, ….et al. 2015. “Development of the Multiscale Version of the SL-AV Global Atmosphere Model.” Russian Meteorology and Hydrology 40 (6): 374–82.Tonani, Maria, Magdalena Balmaseda, Laurent Bertino, Ed Blockley, Gary Brassington, Fraser Davidson, Yann Drillet, et al. 2015. “Status and Future of Global and Regional Ocean Prediction Systems.” Journal of Operational Oceanography. Publisher: The Institute of Marine Engineering, Science & Technology 8 (2). doi:1755876X.2015.1049892.Vasskog, Kristian, Petra Langebroek, John T. Andrews, Jan Even Øie Nilsen, and Atle Nesje. 2015. “The Greenland Ice Sheet during the Last Glacial Cycle: Current Ice Loss and Contribution to Sea-Level Rise from a Palaeoclimatic Perspective.”

Earth-Science Reviews 150. Elsevier: 45–67.Weber, Robin J. T., Alberto Carrassi, and Franscisco J. Doblas-Reyes. 2015. “Linking the Anomaly Initialization Approach to the Mapping Paradigm: A Proof-of-Concept Study.” Monthly Weather Review 143 (11): 4695–4713.Xie, Jiping, Jiang Zhu, Laurent Bertino, and Francois Counillon. 2015. “Analysis of the Northern South China Sea Counter-Wind Current in Winter Using a Data Assimilation Model.” Ocean Dynamics. Springer Verlag. doi:s10236-015-0817-y.Yu, Lei, Gao, Yongqi and Otterå, Odd Helge. 2015. “The sensitivity of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation to enhanced freshwater discharge along the entire, eastern and western coast of Greenland”. Climate Dynamics 2016. Volume 46. (5) p. 1351-1369.Zhou X.M., Li S.L., Luo F.F., Gao Y.Q., Furevik T. (2015): Air Sea Coupling Enhances East Asian Winter Climate Response to the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). Adv. Atmos. Sci., 32(12), 1647-1659, doi: 10.1007/s00376-015-5030-x.

TechnicaL rePorTS (20)Hobæk, Halvor; Sagen, Hanne, 2015. Sound reflection from layered media. NERSC Technical Report no. 340.Korosov, Anton; Pettersson, Lasse H., 2015. Inter-annual dynamics of the spring phytoplankton bloom phenology in the Barents Sea. NERSC Technical Report no. 341. Korosov, Anton; Pettersson, Lasse H., 2015. Inter-annual dynamics of the late summer phytoplankton bloom phenology in the Barents Sea. NERSC Technical Report no. 342.Pettersson, Lasse H.; Tarakcioglu, Gülizar Ö; Staneva, Joanna; Yalciner, Ahmet C.; Lemeshko, Evgeny; Metin, Ayse Duha; Malinovsky, Vladimir; Korinenko, Aleksandr; Korosov, Anton, 2015. Report on the field measurements of currents in the Black Sea. FP7 CoCoNET deliverable D10.3. NERSC Technical Report no. 346.Sagen, Hanne; Worcester, Peter; Geyer, Florian; Ullgren, Jenny; Beszczynska-Möller, Agnieszka; Falck, Eva, 2015. UNDER-ICE 2014: Cruise report. NERSC Technical Report no. 347. 2015, 40 p.Korosov, Anton; Pettersson, Lasse H; Pozdnyakov, Dmitry; Kondrik, Dmitry, 2015. Geographical zoning of the Mediterranean pilot project area. FP7 CoCoNET deliverable D11.9 (version 3.0). NERSC Technical Report no. 348-A.Korosov, Anton; Pettersson, Lasse H., 2015. Data Set: Oceanographic layers-report. Mediterranean pilot project area. FP7 CoCoNET deliverable D11.11. NERSC Technical Report no. 348-B.Bergh, Jon Erik; Rampal, Pierre; Olason, Einar, and Bouillon, Sylvain, 2015: Diffusion/Dispersion laws in the ice pack: a comparison between EVP and EB sea ice models and observed buoy trajectories. Deliverable D2.2 under the project Sea ice model development in view of oilspill forecasting, OGP ART JIP. NERSC Technical Report no. 349.Hansen, Morten W., Anton Korosov, Tor I. Olaussen, and Aleksander Vines, 2015. Nansen-Cloud- implementation plan. NERSC Technical Report no. 350.Korosov, Anton; Pettersson, Lasse H., 2015. Maps of areas with distinct water column dynamics and light regime (GIS layer at meso-scale 1:5000). FP7 CoCoNET deliverable D10.7. NERSC Technical Report no. 351.Korosov, Anton; Pettersson, Lasse H; Pozdnyakov, Dmitry; Kondrik, Dmitry, 2015. Oceanographic layers report - the Black Sea pilot project (WP10)(Geographical Zoning of the Black Sea). CoCoNET

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deliverable D10.9. NERSC Technical Report no. 352.Sakov, Pavel, Francois Counillon, Laurent Bertino, Nicolas Finck and Christoph Renkl, 2015. Quality information document: For Arctic Physical Reanalysis product. Copernicus report # Arctic_Reanalysyis_Phys_002_003. NERSC Technical Report no. 353.Jon Bergh and Matthias Rabatel, 2015: Diffusion/Dispersion laws in the Marginal Ice Zone (MIZ). Deliverable D2.1 under the project Sea ice model development in view of oilspill forecasting, OGP ART JIP.NERSC Technical Report no. 354.Bertino, Laurent, Jon Bergh, and Jiping Xie, 2015: Evaluation of uncertainties by ensemble simulation. Deliverable D3.3. under the project Sea ice model development in view of oilspill forecasting, OGP ART JIP. NERSC Technical Report no. 355.Simpson, M.J.R., J.E.Ø. Nilsen, O.R. Ravndal, K. Breili, H. Sande, H.P. Kierulf, H. Steffen, E. Jansen, M. Carson, O. Vestøl, 2015: Sea Level Change for Norway Past and Present Observations and Projections to 2100. NCCS report no. 1/2015. NERSC Technical Report no. 356.Bouillon, Sylvain; Rampal, Pierre; Olason, Einar, and Phillipp Griewank, 2015. Implementation of the Elasto-Brittle rheology for the ice pack simulations. Deliverable D1.2 under the project Sea ice model development in view of oilspill forecasting, OGP ART JIP. NERSC Technical Report no. 358Bouillon, Sylvain; Rampal, Pierre; Olason, Einar, 2015. Sensitivity of the Elasto-Brittle sea ice model to initial conditions and ice mechanical parameters. Deliverable D2.3 under the project Sea ice model development in view of oilspill forecasting, OGP ART JIP. NERSC Technical Report no. 359.Olason, Einar; Bouillon, Sylvain, 2015. Sea ice model developments in view of oil spill forecasting. D5. Final Report. NERSC Technical Report no. 360.Geyer, Florian; Yamakawa, Asuka; Dzieciuch, Matthew; Sagen, Hanne, 2015. Processing of acoustic tomography data in the ACOBAR and UNDER-ICE experiments and development of new metadata structure for acoustic moorings. NERSC Technical Report no. 361. 20 p. Hanssen-Bauer, I. E.J. Førland, I. Haddeland, H. Hisdal, S. Mayer, A. Nesje, J.E.Ø. Nilsen, S. Sandven, A.B. Sandø, A. Sorteberg og B. Ådlandsvik, 2015: Klima i Norge 2100. NCCS 2/2015. ISBN 2387-3027. PreSenTaTionS and communicaTionS (47)see www.nersc.no/publications

Ph.d. diSSerTaTion (1)Dr. Mary Swapna George: Modelling and obser-vations of upwelling along the southwest coast of India and its intrusion into the Bay of Bengal, dur-ing summer monsoon. Doctoral thesis Geophysical Institute, University of Bergen. (ISBN 978-82-308-2732-1).

maSTer TheSiS (3)Cecilie TL. Andersen: Implementing presentation in Web GIS application with emphasise on users ex-perience. Department of Informatics, University of Bergen, 2015. Supervisor: Dr. Torill Hamre.Sebastian Menze: Estimating fin whale distribution form ambient noise spectra using Bayesian inver-sion. Geophysical Institute, University of Bergen, 2015. Supervisors: Prof. Corinna Schrum and Dr. Hanne Sagen.Karen Fosse Sivertsen: Variability of the geostroph-ic flow in the Aghulas Current, an investigation of sea surface height obtained from altimetry data. Geophysical Institute, University of Bergen, 2015. Supervisor: Prof. Johnny A. Johannessen.

The ReseaRch GRoups

Ocean and cOastal RemOte sensingRick Danielson, Group leader Morten W. Hansen, Scientist IIJohnny A. Johannessen, Vice-DirectorAnton Korosov, Scientist IIVladimir Kudryavtsev, Adjunct ScientistJan Even Nilsen, Scientist II Lasse H. Pettersson, Scientist IDmitry Pozdnyakov, Adjunct ScientistRoshin Raj, Post-doc

sea ice mOdellingPierre Rampal, Group leaderJon Bergh, Scientist II Sylvain Bouillon, Post-docPhilippe Griewank, Post-doc Natalia Ivanova, Scientist II Einar Örn Olasson, Scientist II Abdoulaye Samake, Post-doc Timothy Williams, Scientist II

Ocean and ecOsystem mOdellingAnnette Samuelsen, Group leaderAlfati Ali, Post-doc Ute Daewel, Scientist II Mohamed El Gharamti, Scientist II Knut Arild Lisæter, Scientist IICorinna Schrum, Adjunct Scientist Jiping Xie, Scientist II

data assimilatiOn and FORecastingLaurent Bertino, Group leader Bjorn Backeberg, Adjunct Scientist Alberto Carrassi, Scientist II Geir Evensen, Adjunct ScientistPatrick Raanes, Ph.D. candidateAbhishek S. Shah, Ph.D. candidate Hans Wackernagel, Adjunct Scientist

aRctic acOustics and OceanOgRaphyHanne Sagen, Group leaderAgnieszka Beszczynska-Möller, Adjunct ScientistBrian Duchaw, Scientist IIFlorian Geyer, Scientist IIHalvor Hobæk, Adjunct Scientist Gaute Hope, Ph.D. candidate Yngve Kristoffersen, Adjunct Scientist (in 2015)Espen Storheim, Post-docJenny Ullgren, Post-doc

sea ice and land ice RemOte sensingMohamed Babiker, Acting group leaderLeonid P. Bobylev, Adjunct Scientist Ola M. Johannessen, Scientist I, Nansen Fellow Kirill Khvorostovsky, Scientist IIStefan Muckenhuber, PhD candidateJeong-Won Park, Post-doc Stein Sandven, Manging director

climate pROcessesIgor Igor Esau, Group leaderLinling Chen, Post-doc Richard Davy, Scientist IILisbeth Iversen, Adjunct ScientistAnna Christina Mikalsen, Project manager Victoria Miles, Scientist II Stephen Outten, Scientist II

Svetlana Sorokina, Post-doc Peter Thorne, Scientist II Tobias Wolf, Ph.D. candidate/GC Rieber Scholarship

climate dynamics and pRedictiOnYongqi Gao, Group leader Francois Counillon, Scientist II Yanchun He, Post-doc Detelina Ivanova, Scientist II Noel Keenlyside, Adjunct ScientistHelene Langehaug, Scientist II Kjetil Lygre, Scientist II Lingling Suo, Scientist II Lea Svendsen, Ph.D. candidateYiguo Wang, Post-doc

scientiFic data managementTorill Hamre, Group leaderTor I. Olaussen, ProgrammerMorten Stette, ProgrammerAleksander Vines, Programmer Asuka Yamakawa - Programmer

adminisTRaTion and Technical sTaff Anne Kjersti Bjørndal - FinancesAagot Brunborg - FinancesChristina Therese Brunner – Head of AdministrationKnut Holba – Head of FinancesJohnny A. Johannessen, Vice-directorKristiyana H. Lolova – AdministrationAnders Aarskog Nesse - FinancesTor Olaussen – ITLars-Gunnar Persson – ITLasse H. Pettersson – International cooperation & marketingStein Sandven, Managing DirectorMorten Stette - ITMarian Tvedt - AdministrationSynnøve Vetti - Administration Aleksander Vines - IT

Current staff at https://www.nersc.no/about/staff

VisiTinG scienTisTs and sTudenTsSébasitien Billeau - Climate predictionSönke Dangendorf - OceanographyDenis Demchev - OceanographyLi Fei - ClimateMary Swapna George - ModellingColin Grudzien - Data assimilationShengping He - ClimateYing Huang - ClimateDmitry Kondrik - OceanographyKhushboo Jhugroo- Remote SensingJobby Mathew - OceanographyFisokuhle Mbatha - OceanographyAlexandra Mushta - Remote sensingSusa Niiranen - OceanographyGlacomo di Noto - Sea iceYu Peng -Remote sensingSyam Sankar - OceanographyKirill Smirnov - Sea iceScott Stephenson - Sea iceJing Tao - ClimateMichael Varentsov - MeteorologyAnna Vesman - Remote sensingPatrick Vianello - OceanographyMarc de Vos - OceanographyShinu Wilson - ClimateLiuqian Yu - Climate

11

sta ffin 2015

TeRRa oRbiT asThormøhlens gate 47

N-5006 Bergen, NORWAYPhone: +47 55205800

Fax: +47 55205801e-mail: terraorbit@terraorbit.com

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rbitrbitTerraTerra

nansen enViRonmenTal ReseaRch cenTRe - india

6A, Oxford Business Centre, Sreekandath Road Kochi 682016 Kerala - INDIA

Phone: +91 484 2383351 Fax: +91 484 2353124

E-mail: nerci@ipath.net.inhttp://www.nerci.in

NERS

C/lh

p 20

©16

nansen-Zhu inTeRnaTional ReseaRch cenTRe

c/o Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences,

PO Box 9804, Beijing 100029, CHINAPhone: +86-10-62063256E-mail: nzc@mail.iap.ac.cn

http://nzc.iap.ac.cn

nansen inTeRnaTional enViRonmenTal and RemoTe sensinG cenTRe14th. Line V.O. 7A, office 34-35

199034 Saint Petersburg, RUSSIAPhone: +7 812 324 5103/01

Fax: +7 812 324 5102E-mail: adm@niersc.spb.ruhttp://www.niersc.spb.ru

nansen scienTific socieTyc/o NERSC,

Thormøhlens gate 47 N-5006 Bergen, NORWAY

Phone: +47 55205800Fax: +47 55205801

e-mail: ola.johannessen@nersc.no

nansen-TuTu cenTRe foR maRine enViRonmenTal ReseaRch c/o Marine Research Institute

University of Cape TownRodebosh 7701 - SOUTH AFRICA

Phone: + 27 21 650 3281 E-mail: bjorn.backeberg@uct.ac.za

http://ma-re.uct.ac.za/nansen-tutu-centre/

nansen enViRonmenTal and RemoTe sensinG cenTeRThormøhlens gate 47 Svalbard research parkN-5006 Bergen N-9171 Longyearbyen, NORWAY SvalbardPhone: +47 55205800 Phone: +47 79026447Fax: +47 55205801

e-mail: post@nersc.no http://www.nersc.no

nansen inTeRnaTional cenTRe foR coasTal, ocean and climaTe sTudies

c/o Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies (BCAS)

House 10, Road 16AGulshan-1, Dhaka- 1212, BANGLADESH

Phone: +8801730019213E-mail: atiq.rahman@bcas.net

a Center in the Nansen Group of research institutes also comprising:

The staff of the Nansen Center gathered at Sandven Hotel in October 2015.