Restoring and maintaining the resilience of the Black Sea ecosystem, while enabling a sustainable exploitation of its natural resources is vital. A better coordination and alignment of research and innovation efforts alongside developing improved knowledge base and joint infrastructures could substantially support this timely challenge. Towards this end the Burgas Vision Paper was produced, by an initiative supported by EC, as the key framework document for a shared vision for a productive, healthy, resilient, sustainable and better-valued Black Sea by 2030. It addresses the four key pillars on which a new Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) and its Implementation Plan can be built on: (1) Addressing fundamental Black Sea research challenges, (2) Developing products, solutions and clusters underpinning Black Sea Blue Growth, (3) Building of critical support systems and innovative Infrastructures, (4) Education and capacity building. Building on this recently emerging policy framework, the core contribution of the Black Sea CONNECT CSA will be to scientifically, technically and logistically support the Black Sea Blue Growth Initiative towards the implementation of the Burgas Vision Paper, with a view on boosting the blue economy in the region. The overall objective is to coordinate the development of the SRIA and its implementation plan both at national and regional level. The SRIA and its implementation plan will guide stakeholders from academia, funding agencies, industry, policy and society to address together the fundamental Black Sea challenges, to promote blue growth and economic prosperity of the Black Sea region, to build critical support systems and innovative research infrastructure and to improve education and capacity building. The project will support the design of synergistic activities such as developing an operational network of funders, new transnational joint activities and achieving the knowledge transfer.

Arctic climate change increases the need of a growing number of stakeholders for trustworthy weather and climate predictions, both within the Arctic and beyond. APPLICATE will address this challenge and develop enhanced predictive capacity by bringing together scientists from academia, research institutions and operational prediction centres, including experts in weather and climate prediction and forecast dissemination. APPLICATE will develop a comprehensive framework for observationally constraining and assessing weather and climate models using advanced metrics and diagnostics. This framework will be used to establish the performance of existing models and measure the progress made within the project. APPLICATE will make significant model improvements, focusing on aspects that are known to play pivotal roles in both weather and climate prediction, namely: the atmospheric boundary layer including clouds; sea ice; snow; atmosphere-sea ice-ocean coupling; and oceanic transports. In addition to model developments, APPLICATE will enhance predictive capacity by contributing to the design of the future Arctic observing system and through improved forecast initialization techniques. The impact of Arctic climate change on the weather and climate of the Northern Hemisphere through atmospheric and oceanic linkages will be determined by a comprehensive set of novel multi-model numerical experiments using both coupled and uncoupled ocean and atmosphere models. APPLICATE will develop strong user-engagement and dissemination activities, including pro-active engagement of end-users and the exploitation of modern methods for communication and dissemination. Knowledge-transfer will also benefit from the direct engagement of operational prediction centres in APPLICATE. The educational component of APPLICATE will be developed and implemented in collaboration with the Association of Early Career Polar Scientists (APECS).