João Canário, researcher and invited professor at the Department of Chemical Engineering at Técnico, is the leader of T-MOSAiC – an international project in the Arctic funded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia. For the first time Portugal takes the lead in an international project in the Arctic.

T-MOSAiC project (Terrestrial Multidisciplinary distributed Observatories for the Study of Arctic Climate) is carried out by IASC’s Terrestrial Working Group (TWG). This international project involves the participation of 23 countries, including the 8 Arctic countries and aims to better understand how terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems with other components of the Earth systems responding to climate change.

This will involve changes in biochemical cycles, greenhouse gas emission, biodiversity and trophic levels, snow layer thickness, permafrost dynamics, extreme weather events, coastal erosion and in the transference of water, organic matter, nutrients and pollutants between the ecosystems.