Sharing information and knowledge among NHSs and international projects promotes a consolidated approach to studying the freshwater flux to the Arctic Ocean and Seas and furthers our understanding of the Arctic hydrological regime and related climatic variability and change. The Commission for Hydrology supported the implementation of a hydrological observation system within the Arctic drainage basin known as Arctic-HYCOS (see ArcticHycos.pdf [44]). The Arctic countries of Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russian Federation, Sweden and the United States are participants in the Arctic-HYCOS project, and they freely and openly share all data and metadata from stations within the project network with all project participants, following Resolution 25 (Cg-XIII) on the Exchange of Hydrological Data and Products.
The Arctic-HYCOS project provides a platform (http://hydrolite.ddns.net/hisArctic/ ) for the regular collection and free exchange of Arctic hydrological data. Project activities also include evaluating, maintaining and potentially upgrading existing observation stations. Network analysis identifies observation stations suitable to evaluate freshwater flux into the Arctic Ocean and Seas and to study changes in Arctic hydrological regimes relative to climate change.
The development of the system in support of standardized data exchange allows: international cooperation to study and assess hydrological processes in the Arctic, in particular related to climate change; reliable assessments of freshwater flux into the Arctic Ocean and Seas both in the short and longer terms; a better understanding of links between Arctic river discharge, the freshwater balance of the Arctic Ocean, thermohaline circulation, and the global climate; improved water management enabling better stream flow monitoring and prediction of hydrological changes thus improving life support systems in polar communities; hydrological data to be contributed to other Arctic Observation Systems, in particular to research groups and monitoring programs dealing with Arctic snow hydrology, permafrost, glaciers and glacial runoff; and hydrological data to be contributed to Global Observation Systems, in particular WIGOS.