Centre Franco-Sibérien: collaborations franco-russes pour l'environnement et le climat

High latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere play a key role in the Earth system through multiple couplings between climate, biogeochemical cycles, ecosystems, landscapes and hydrology. Siberia is a particular hot spot of these interactions. It is subject to a number of vulnerabilities under a regionally enhanced climate change, including thawing permafrost, shifting tree line, increased forest fires, changing cryosphere, enhanced human impact at high latitudes, and within sight of the Siberian coast, the opening of sea ways in the previously year-round sea-ice-covered Arctic Ocean.
Increasing human activities also exert a strong impact on the local and remote environment with the exploration of oil and gas, forest exploitation, agriculture and other uses of natural resources. Here, humans and the perturbed natural systems are part of numerous interactions that require better understanding. Gas flaring, systematic in Russia, emits large amounts of black carbon, methane, and other pollutants toward the rest of the Arctic
Strong scientific collaborations exist currently with Russian research laboratories and institutes in the frame of various bilateral or trilateral structuring projects. Existing collaborations include the LIA YAK-AEROSIB (atmospheric composition from aircraft), GDRI CARWETSIB (wetlands and biogeochemistry), GDRI SAMIA (spectroscopy for atmospheric composition), CliMireSiber (peatland experiments and carbon sink function), LIA Vostok (paleoclimate from ice cores) and several other initiatives ranging from permafrost geomorphology to the study of boreal forest fires. Together these projects and new ones emerging in the Centre Franco Sibérien, an initiative of CNRS and the MESR cover a wide spectrum of environmental and climate related research focusing on Siberia, either in the frame of comparative studies, or to monitor this huge and vulnerable area, or as a testbed for general Earth system theories. Data coming from their experiments, campaigns and observatories form an important basis for a better understanding of this critical region of the Arctic. Emerging questions revolve around the increased emissions of greenhouse gases by local ecosystems under climate change, changes to the regional environment, evolution of permafrost and impact of regional emissions of pollutants on the rest of the Arctic.