Special issue  

Developing Arctic Modelling and Observing Capabilities for Long-term Environmental Studies (DAMOCLES) was the flagship EU project for the IPY. It concerned 47 partners from about 10 European Countries and triggered an active international scientific cooperation with Russia, China, Japan and the USA. At the time the DAMOCLES contract ended about one year ago, more than 150 scientific papers appeared in peer-reviewed publications under DAMOCLES. There are more publications to come as evidenced during the final General Assembly of Damocles in Tromsø, Norway in May 2010. During this final GA it was agreed and decided that DAMOCLES should find an appropriate scientific journal to release an important set of publications based on 6 synthetic papers and up to 30 topical papers. After some investigation it was decided to contact the European Geosciences Union Copernicus Publications to check the adequacy for submitting Damocles results dedicated to Ocean, Atmosphere and Sea Ice sciences in three Copernicus relevant journals: Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP), The Cryosphere (TC) and Ocean Science (OS).