Stochastic forecasting is widely used in meteorology, in order to provide confidence indices of the prediction (Molteni et al., 1996). Stochastic forecasting is introduced by Yin and Oey (2007) for application to the GOM.

In a paper published in Ocean Dynamics Drs. Francois Counillon and Laurent Bertino present a sensitivity study to different perturbation systems is carried out by perturbing the initial state, lateral forcing, and atmospheric forcing.

The Nansen Centers in Bergen and St. Petersburg in cooperation with IFREMER and BOOST Technologies in France obtained the cover publication in Geophysical Research Letter.

Advanced synthetic aperture radar (ASAR) signals collected by ESA´s Envisat help scientists map surface currents in the world oceans. As demonstrated, ASAR is a valuable source of high-resolution information on the line-of-sight roughness and velocity of the moving ocean surface.

The Arctic, once politically and literally frozen, is melting at a pace unforeseen even a few years ago. Arctic petroleum resources are of great interest in an ever-tightening global energy market, and there is a considerable potential for increased shipping in and through the region.

His Majesty the King of Norway has appointed Professor Ola Mathias Johannessen, founding director ot he Nansen Center, to Officer of The Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav for his efforts in climate and polar research.

The Council of the Order has in its evaluation considerably emphasized his efforts in the research of polar oceans.

The five years anniversary of the Nansen-Zhu International Research Centre (NZC) was celebrated with a scientific colloquium in Beijing on November 3rd and 4th. The Norwegian Minister of Research and Higher Education Tora Aasland and the Vice-president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Prof. Zhongli Ding visited the Nansen-Zhu Centre during the anniversary. NZC is located at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) of CAS and named in the honour and spirit of the Norwegian scientist, humanist and diplomat Dr.

Denne uken samles mer enn 20 forskere fra åtte kinesiske og fem europeiske institusjoner for å diskutere harmonisering av de operative system for havovervåkning og varsling for de to kontinent.

Nansen senter for miljø og fjernmåling (NERSC) i Bergen er vertskap for møtet og Forskningsdirektør Johnny A. Johannessen er koordinator for dette EU finansierte prosjektet ”DRAGONESS – DRAGON in support of harmonizing European and Chinese marine monitoring for Environment and Security System”.

The drifting sea ice in the Arctic is an indicator of climate variability, which is caused both by natural and increased greenhouse gasses by human activities.

Last years record minimum ice area of less than 4 mill km2 compared to the average value of 6 mill. km2 over the 1979-2007 period, lead to speculation by many research groups that the ice cover in the Arctic had reached a tipping point and that it would disappear during the summer at a much earlier time than projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the United Nations.

François Counillon will defend his Doctoral thesis "Ensemble-based data assimilation and forecasting with an eddy-resolving model of the Gulf of Mexico" on Friday the 12th September at 13:15, at the Nansen Center/Geophysical Institute, University of Bergen.

The main objective of the thesis is to develop and validate a state of the art operational ocean forecasting system for the Gulf of Mexico region.

The thesis contains three referee publications on:

• Implementing a state of the art eddy resolving model for the Gulf of Mexico and analyzing the capability and limitations of the EnOI

Global warming is enhancing in the Arctic regions. The air temperature has increased to double that of the global average over the last 100 years, the ice cover is decreasing at a rate of 3 – 5% per decade while the thicker multi-year ice is decreasing at a rate of 7 – 10% per decade, the river discharge from Russia is increasing, the tundra-permafrost is thawing and the snow cover on land is decreasing. Furthermore, in the past few years the Greenland ice sheet has lost mass along its edges – more than the accumulation increase in the interior.