The four historic pictures see the story of the long term cooperation between China and Finland. Some representative results are presented in this special issue.

The first Chinese-Finnish Bohai Sea ice field campaign in the coastal area of Bayuyuan, Liaodong Bay on 26 January 1990. Mr. Ari Sein? from the Finnish Institute of Marine Research (FIMR), Prof. Zhijun Li from Dalian University of Technology (DUT), then, as a researcher, and Mr. Yonghai Yu from National Marine Environmental Monitoring Centre(NMEMC) were installing a weather mast on the ice. (Upper left, Text: Zhijun Li/DUT; Photo: Mr. Henry S?derman/FIMR)

A research camp on sea ice during the drift of the schooner Tara in the Arctic Ocean in April 2007. The tents were for accommodation, scientific measurements, shelter and storage. Different sensors were installed in the vicinity, while other measurements were performed several hundreds of meters away. A tethered balloon was launched for atmospheric measurements. The tilt of the vessel resulted from the ice pressure on the hull. The Tara field campaign was the key component of the Developing Arctic Modelling and Observing Capabilities for Long-term Environmental Studies(DAMOCLES) project funded by EC, also an international partner of the CHINARE program. (Upper right, Text and photo:Dr. Marcel Nicolaus, Norwegian Polar Institute/Alfred Wegener Institute)

Sea ice thickness survey at a short-term ice station during the CHINARE2008 expedition in Canadian Basin, Arctic Ocean. Mr. Pekka Kosloff and Dr. Bin Cheng from the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) and Dr. Ruibo Lei from the Polar Research Institute of China (PRIC), then as a Ph.D student from the DUT, were measuring ice thickness. In the background there were an ice breaker R/V

Xuelong

and a small research boat deployed from R/V

Xuelong

to reach the ice floe. The CHINARE2008 hosted a group of international scientists from the DAMOCLES project. (Lower left, Text: Ruibo Lei/PRIC; Photo: Ms. Jing Cui)

Mr. Pekka Kosloff from the FMI and a visiting scientist, Dr. Lianjian Shi, from the National Satellite Ocean Application Service (NSOAS) were installing field equipments on 12 December, 2013, on Lake Oraj?rvi, Sodankyl?, in the Finnish Lapland. This small but sustainable lake observation program has been going on since 2009. (Lower right, Text and photo:Bin Cheng/FMI)