DEFROST is one out of three Nordic Centres of Excellence (NCoE) that in 2010 were granted for a five year period under the Nordic Top-level Research Initiative (TRI) and its largest subprogramme on "Interaction between climate change and the cryosphere.

The TRI has its background in a declaration stated by the Nordic Prime Ministers at a 2008 meeting in Riksgränsen. The overall goals of the TRI is:

• To establish a coordinated Nordic effort towards research and innovation on climate, energy and the environment
• To develop collaboration between research and innovation organisations and institutions in the Nordic countries
• To act as a platform for further international collaboration.

We are in the NCoE DEFROST working towards these goals with the specific objectives:

• To improve our understanding of arctic terrestrial and shallow sub-sea permafrost interactions with climate
• To provide improved data on energy exchange, carbon cycling and GHG emissions from terrestrial and near-coastal cryospheric environments
• To improve on climate model capabilities for simulating the feedback processes associated with observed changes in permafrost, snow and ice Av

The Top-level Research Initiative six sub-programmes.
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