DAMOCLES

DAMOCLES is an European contribution to the International Polar Year. It is an integrated ice-atmosphere-ocean monitoring and forecasting system designed to observe, understand and quantify climate changes in the Arctic. An advanced observing system is being developed and will be deployed in order to evaluate climate change impacts, improve forecasting models, and quantify the effects on the environment.

DAMOCLES is coordinated by J. C. Gascard (Univ. Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France) and involves 45 European research institutes and other international entities.

The Laboratoire d'Océanographie Spatiale of IFREMER with the CERSAT contributes to the description of the actual sea ice cover at ocean basin scale using scatterometer and radiometer data. The next scatterometer to be launched in 2006 is ASCAT (EUMETSAT-METOP). IFREMER develops the algorithms to build the homogeneous ASCAT backscatter maps and ice drift estimation.