Image: ESA/Mlaspace
Experts also set out roadmap for polar observations by Copernicus satellite programme
The EU is setting up an office to coordinate European activities on polar science, the European Commission has announced.
The European Polar Coordination Office (EPCO) will be based in Umeå, Sweden, from 2025 to 2029 and will be managed by the European Polar Board, an independent membership association for research actors.
It is being developed as part of an EU-funded research project called EU-PolarNet 2.
The EPCO will enable European policymakers to communicate with the European polar science community, the Commission said, and will coordinate the EU Polar Cluster, a group of EU-funded projects on polar science.
It will also represent EU polar projects and researchers working in the polar regions, allowing them to share their knowledge with the Commission and other policymakers, it said.
Separately, the EU Polar Task Force, a group of experts set up by the Commission, published a roadmap on how the EU’s Copernicus Earth-observation programme should observe the polar regions over the next five to 10 years.
The roadmap calls for a Polar Hub to be created to direct these observations.