The ESA/AIMES NHL integration workshop objectives are:

1. To assess the key issues in northern high latitude-global connectivity in Earth System Modelling, define the problems in understanding these issues, and build the key partnerships aimed at realising a working strategy for NHL studies.
2. To examine the state of the art in data assimilation in Earth System Modelling, with an emphasis on Earth Observation data, identify current data gaps, specifically focusing on the NHL but also including the role of external teleconnections/feedback mechanisms in influencing the NHL.
3. To highlight the wealth of ongoing activities in the various projects, networks, space agencies and within the IPY aimed at the NHL and the current, planned and required networks and satellites to fill identified data gaps.

The workshop will be structured around review presentations from keynote contributors coupled with a series of break-out sessions covering the following themes:

1. Hydrologic Cycle
2. Vegetation Change
3. Ocean Circulation/Changes in Sea-Ice
4. Global Teleconnections – drivers and feedbacks influencing NHL response to global change and how they are modelled.

Within each of these cross-cutting themes key issues of the current and likely change in distribution and variability of permafrost, peatland, fire, biophysical variables, sea ice and sea level will be addressed as well as the impact on and of anthropogenic processes and representation of these elements within regional and global models. Each theme will be tackled by a community of modellers (DGVM to Global), process, in situ observation and remote sensing scientists.