Decadal- to millennial-scale variability of Arctic–Subarctic oceans and adjacent lands: a contribution of the Polar Climate Stability Network of Canada to the International Polar YearThis article introduces a series of papers published in this Special Issue on the theme Polar Climate Stability Network. It is also in memorium of Dr. Roy M. (“Fritz”) Koerner (1932–2008)

Abstract

The present special issue gathers contributions from the Polar Climate Stability Network (PCS-N), a network funded by the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences. These contributions fall primarily under one of its four research themes, that of ‘‘The Arctic/North Atlantic Oscillation and the role of the Arctic Ocean in the Climate System: Paleoclimatological Perspectives’’. A companion special issue on ‘‘Polar Climate Stability’’, in the Journal of Climate (ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=getcollectionc cf. also Koerner 1989) still deserves full recognition. The bridging of ice, land, and ocean studies at high latitudes encounters major difficulties, particularly associated with the uneven time control of relevant time series, but it is a focus point of the PCS-N group, and it will thus receive special attention at a later stage of our research activities. A first attempt has been made, though, during a dedicated meeting held two years ago at the GEOTOP research centre (Montreal, Quebec). During this meeting, ice-, land-, and oceanbased geoscientists tried to address the specific issue of seaice variability during the Holocene (Fisher et al. 2006). ‘‘Fritz’’ Koerner, who passed away just a few months ago, was part of this initiative, and the PCS-N group would like to acknowledge his exceptional contribution to Canadian paleoclimate studies by dedicating this special issue to his memory (see his obituary at www.igsoc.org/news/ fritzkoerner/index.html). On land, pioneering work by many Quaternary geologists started as early as the 18th century, but has steadily increased since the late 19th century (see Andrews (1985); or Dyke (1999) for an overview of benchmark papers and early work). For the obvious reason of their location, below the (previously) thick Arctic sea-ice cover, deep-sea records from the Arctic Ocean remained much less documented than land records, although here also, pioneering work started quite early (see the review by Weber and Roots (1990)). A major step forward was made in 2004, when IODP (Integrated Ocean Drilling Program) supported the ACEX (Arctic Coring Expedition) on Lomonosov Ridge (Moran et al. 2004), which yielded a discontinuous but critical sedimentary sequence illustrating major climate and environmental changes in the Arctic, since the Eocene, and then with the 2005 US–Swedish Healy Oden TRansArctic eXpedition (HOTRAX; Darby et al. 2005a, 2005b), which yielded a series of deep-sea cores from all Arctic ridges. Several papers from this special issue report on this freshly recovered material. However, a critical step in the planning of the work behind most of the present contributions was achieved earlier, during a GEOTOP meeting held in 2002 at the St-Michel-des Saints field station of the University of Quebec at Montreal. Several contributors of the present special issue attended this meeting, as well as, most importantly, two of the chief-scientists of HOTRAX, Leonid Polyak (Byrd Polar Research Center, the Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio) and Dennis Darby (Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia), thus helping to determine future coring targets and objectives (see Fig. 1). This special issue represents a first step in PCS-N achievements with respect to the setting of robust paleoclimate time series from ocean and land records. From this Received 1 September 2008. Accepted 1 October 2008. Published on the NRC Research Press Web site at cjes.nrc.ca on 14 January 2009.