EISCAT Scientific Association has joined the COOPEUS proposal to EU for collaboration with US environmental research institutions regarding cooperation with USA on common data policies and standards relevant to global research infrastructures in the environment field. The COOPEUS proposal that was submitted in reply to the EU FP7 call INFRA-2012-3.1, and the coordinator is Dr. Christoph Waldmann from the Centre for Marine Environmental Sciences (MARUM) at University of Bremen in Germany.

The COOPEUS consortium has 9 European participants and represents projects related to radar atmospheric and space weather observations, Carbon observations in the atmospheres, Earth dynamics observations and observations of biodiversity within the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI).

The aim of the COOPEUS project is to strengthen the links between the corresponding EU and US research infrastructures in the environmental field. The proposed coordination effort aims toward harmonization of data policies and standards and toward coordination of observation programs. Coordination is planned among US and European researchers working in the same field, as well as among the researchers across the disciplines and it is planned for 3 years.

COOPEUS, brings together scientists and users involved in the environmental research infrastructure projects within ESFRI: EISCAT, EPOS, LifeWATCH, EMSO, and ICOS. The US counterparts are the projects AMISR, EARTHSCOPE, DataONE, OOI and NEON. The aim of COOPEUS is to interlink these projects and programs in order to develop common data practices and standards. The 9 officially participating European institutions are located in Finland, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Sweden and Spain.

The main task proposed for EISCAT is to facilitate the coordination of its atmospheric radar data products with those of the US partners. The potential US counterpart institution for the EISCAT activities is MIT Haystack Observatory. Colleagues from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, from SRI International in Menlo Park, California Rutherford Appleton Laboratories, UK also support the proposal. These US institutions are running the major US atmospheric incoherent scatter radars, while the Rutherford Appleton Observatories are involved in EISCAT and strongly involved in European space weather activities.