The rapid warming in the Arctic has profound socio-economic consequences.Current and expected climatic changes (declines in sea ice cover) in theArctic are propelling growth in marine
mobile activities, such as shipping, tourism and fisheries. Ship-based sectorsand actors are demanding more accurate and salient Arctic weather andclimate predictions, which puts greatexpectations on our current global and regional forecasting systems. SALIENSEAS aims to understand the mobility patterns, constraints,challenges, decision-making contexts and information needs of end-users indifferent European Arctic marine sectors; to develop and apply participatorytools for co-producing salient climate services with Arctic marineend-users; and to co-develop user-relevant and sector specific climateservices and dissemination systems dedicated to Arctic marine end-users bydemonstration of seamless weather-to-climateArctic climate services tailored to key social, environmental and economicneeds. The SALIENSEAS project will bring together a team of social andnatural scientists, met-ocean service personnel, and end-users in an iterativeresearch and co-production process.Stakeholders and end-users will be directly involved in the project, both asadvisors in the project management and as respondents and participantsin end-user workshops. We will adopt cutting edge and partly in-housedeveloped concepts and methodologies for effectively co-producingknowledge and knowledge systems as an overall approach to the project andas part of the work packages. SALIENSEAS has already been endorsed asa key contributing project in the implementation plans of the Year of PolarPrediction, which creates excellent opportunities for extending the approachand communicating the lessons learnt beyond the current European scope ofthe project.
