37 - NIERSC

The Nansen International Environmental and Remote Sensing Centre (NIERSC) was established in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1992 as a non-profit joint venture and reorganized as a Scientific Foundation in 2001. NIERSC is co-founded by NERSC and the University of Bergen, Norway, two Russian Academy of Sciences institutes, St. Petersburg State University and Max Planck Society in Germany. The vision of NIERSC is to understand, monitor and predict climate and environmental changes in the high northern latitudes for serving the society with a special focus on the Russian High North. Together with two of its founders NIERSC was elected the 2005 EU Descartes Laureate in Earth Sciences for the attainments achieved during more than 10 years of joint climate research activities under the project “Climate and Environmental Change in the Arctic – CECA”. NIERSC is a member of the Global Climate Forum (GCF) and the Arctic Regional Ocean Observing System (Arctic ROOS). The NIERSC expertise covers climate change in the Arctic, including sea ice and surface air temperature, satellite remote sensing of atmosphere, ocean and sea ice and some other areas. NIERSC has coordinated the FP7 Inco-lab project EuropeanRussian Centre for Cooperation in the Arctic and Sub-Arctic Environmental and Climate Research - EuRuCAS (2012-2015) with 12 European partners. Apart from research, NIERSC is also involved in educational activities at postgraduate level performed under the NANSEN Fellowship Program.

Role in the project

NIERSC will contribute with Russian snow and ice data and air temperature from Russian areas. In collaboration with RIHMI (All Russian Research Institute for Hydro-meteorological Information) it will also provide hydrological data. The work will be lead by Dr. Leonid Bobylev, Managing Director of NIERSC. NIERSC will contribute to WP1, WP2 and WP5.