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Abstract. The goal of the Boreal Ecosystem-Atmosphere Study (BOREAS) is to improve our understanding of the interactions between the boreal forest biome and the atmosphere in order to clarify their roles in global change. This overview paper describes the science background and motivations for BOREAS and the experimental design and operations of the BOREAS 1994 and BOREAS 1996 field years. The findings of the 83 papers in this journal special issue are reviewed. In section 7, important scientific results of the project to date are summarized and future research directions are identified. IntroductionPersuasive arguments indicate that there will be global warming resulting from the continuing increase in atmospheric CO 2 concentration [Houghton et al., 1995; Hasselmann, 1997].However, there are uncertainties about the magnitude and regional patterns of projected global change because of shortcomings in the atmospheric general circulation models (AGCMs) used for climate simulation. There is a real need to improve (1) our understanding of basic climatic physical and dynamic processes so that we can enhance the realism and accuracy of AGCMs and (2) our ability to quantify global-scale climate variables and parameters to better initialize and vali- The exchanges of energy, water, and carbon between the atmosphere and the continents represent the lower boundary condition for the atmospheric physical climate system and the climatic forcing to terrestrial biota and biogeochemical cycles.• •øCanada Center for Remote Sensing, Ottawa.• •Atmospheric Sciences Resource Center, Albany, New York.•2University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland.•3University of Wisconsin, Madison.•4Forestry Canada, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.•5Atmospheric Environment Service, Downsview, Ontario, Canada.•'NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.

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