ICED is an international, multidisciplinary programme established primarily to deliver the scientific analyses required to address major ecological challenges arising as a result of climate and human driven changes.
Some of the strongest regional expressions of global climate change have occurred in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. The physical changes observed have also been associated with variations in Southern Ocean ecosystems. Given the existence of, and potential for, dramatic responses to climate change in this region, developing the ability to predict ecosystem dynamics at a range of spatial and temporal scales is crucial. However, there is added complexity in determining climate impacts in a disturbed system where harvesting has been extensive. Understanding the underlying processes driving ecosystem responses to climate change on a regional and circumpolar basis is necessary to provide a sound basis for the sustainable management of this globally important ocean. The Southern Ocean is also a key component of the carbon cycle, yet global carbon budget models are lacking detail from this region. An understanding of these processes is also necessary to predict the impacts and feedbacks of the Southern Ocean as part of the Earth System.
There are 29 countries currently engaged in Antarctic scientific research, and whilst a high level of coordination exists between some of the programmes, these are often limited in research focus or in geographical coverage. ICED will generate multi-disciplinary links between biologists, oceanographers, biogeochemists, climatologists and fisheries scientists from the international community.
An ICED Planning Workshop was held at the British Antarctic Survey in May 2005 involving 34 participants from 14 countries. A summary of this event was published in the April 2006 issue of the International GLOBEC Newsletter. In 2008 the ICED Science Plan and Implementation Strategy was adopted and published jointly by GLOBEC and IMBER. You can download a PDF from our homepage. Hard copies are also available (limited supply) from the ICED office. The current members of the ICED Scientific Steering Committee can be found here.