The Alliance multi-purpose research vessel has started the High North21 marine geophysics campaign, the fifth Arctic expedition of the Italian Navy, with the scientific coordination of the Hydrographic Institute of the Navy (IIM).
Alliance ship, owned by NATO and with Italian Navy flag and crew, left Italy on 21 May after following the COVID 19 health protocol and arrived on 8 June (World Oceans Day) in the Norwegian port of Tromsø for a short technical stop.
The High North21 Team is composed of 45 crew members and 20 researchers and scientists belonging to the IIM, the NATO Center for Maritime Research & Experimentation (CMRE) and the Joint Research Center (JRC) of the European Union (EU) . In the High North21 scientific team there are six young people who demonstrate the particular attention of the Navy for training with the aim of supporting more concretely the action of the United Nations for the Decade of the Sea for Sustainable Development 2021-2030 (UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development), with the program dedicated to the Ocean Generation – Early Carrier Ocean Professional – for the vision of the decade the science we need for the ocean we want.
The objective of High North 21 will be aimed at the knowledge of the ocean for the Decade of the sea to create 3D-mapping, that is a multidisciplinary three-dimensional mapping obtained with the integration of data acquired from multiple multi-platform systems, from the satellite to the environmental characterization.
In particular, the High North 21 hydro-oceanographic research activity will be mainly focused in unexplored areas, near the limits of sea ice and environmental observation sites. Furthermore, the contribution to environmental monitoring will be fundamental to give a temporal continuity to the acquisition of the data series, where anchoring chains of instruments and sensors at different depths (mooring), already operating and belonging to the Svalbard Integrated Observing System ( SIOS). This synergistic activity is an expression of the commitment of the Italian Navy through the IIM with the main Italian research centers (National Research Council – CNR, National Institute of Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics – OGS, National Agency for new technologies, energy and sustainable economic development – ENEA and the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology – INGV) and the Norwegian Research Institute FFI (Norwegian Defense Research Establishment).
High North 21 is technological innovation and research for a sustainable ocean, also through the implementation of the ARNACOSKY program (ARctic NAvigation with COsmo SKYmed), a joint research project between IIM and the company e-Geos / Telespazio to navigate the Arctic at the limit of ice by predicting the best safe route, monitoring environmental dynamics.