Past Events

*The International Symposium on Plastics in the Arctic and Sub-Arctic Region (originally scheduled to be held 28-30 September) has been rescheduled to take place online on 2-4 March and 8-9 March 2021 due to COVID-19 pandemic.

The Government of Iceland in collaboration with the Nordic Council of Ministers is hosting an International Symposium on Plastics in the Arctic and Sub-Arctic Region in April 2020 in connection with the Icelandic Chairmanship of the Arctic Council.

Iceland holds the Chairmanship of the Arctic Council from May 2019 to May 2021 and intends during this period to promote discussion on ways and means that may reduce the impact of plastics in the Arctic Marine Environment.

The International Symposium will focus on scientific knowledge of the problem and the best practices to deal with the huge challenge. In this way the symposium is expected to build a foundation of science and deliver information and advice for decision makers.

Main Themes:

• Sources and transport of plastics in the Arctic and sub-Arctic: Shipping, tourism, fishing, and terrestrial sources
• Arctic challenges in waste management strategies
• Methodology for studies on macro-, micro- and nano-plastics
• Monitoring of the Arctic: Setting a baseline for Arctic plastics
• Impact of plastic pollution in the Arctic. Ecotoxicology, toxicology, and socioeconomics
• NordMar Plastic project on international standardization: NordMar Plastic is one of the projects run by the Icelandic chairmanship program in the Nordic Council of Ministers
• Solving the plastic challenge: Best mitigation practices from around the world (ocean-based and land-based)
• Developing a regional action plan for the Arctic. Better strategies in monitoring for the future. Taking
  coordinated actions and developing joint initiatives for different industries

Join a listening session to share your story, experiences or data and hear from others in the region. These two-hour listening sessions will start with four short presentations from people who live and work in the region with time for questions. Then small group discussions to hear from participants on what they have or are experiencing in terms of unusual dryness in the region and how they have prepared for future drought.

Please follow the link above to register.

The UAF Geophysical Institute presents the virtual 2021 Science for Alaska Lecture Series. Tune in at 7 p.m. on Tuesdays to learn about exciting science from measuring the aurora, monitoring whale populations with unmanned aircraft, and participating in the largest Arctic expedition in history. RSVP to watch on Zoom or watch live from the UAF or GI Facebook pages.

The North Atlantic right whale is a critically endangered species with only some 400 individuals left in the wild. A dwindling food supply has forced these whales further north, where collisions with cargo vessels in busy shipping lanes has been a major cause of mortality. In this talk, members of the ACUASI team will discuss how unmanned aircraft normally deployed for geophysical studies are being used to monitor whales in the North Atlantic and how that information is used to protect their populations. Three seasons of this mission has taught many lessons and helped to mature the state of unmanned aviation in North America. Plans are underway for a fourth season of flying to “save the whales.”

Talks are free and for the public. All ages are encouraged to attend. This is the fifth in a series of six free, public lectures for the virtual 2021 Science for Alaska Lecture Series.

International Glaciological Society Global Seminar:

Speaking:

Lavanya Ashokkumar, University of Arizona, "Modelled Estimates of Mass Loss Rates From Arctic Glaciers"

Jullian Williams, U Texas, San Antonio, "Sea Ice Lead Detection in the Arctic"

Anna Bergstrom, Boise State University, "'The Role of Sediment in Hydrological and Biogeochemical Connectivity Between Glaciers and Downstream Ecosystems of the McMurdo Dry Valleys, Antarctica"

Please register in advance for the seminars. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the seminar.

The seminar will also be available afterwards on the Friends of the International Glaciological Society Facebook page so that you can watch it there if technology fails or you can't make it.

The Permafrost Carbon Feedback (PCF) Intervention Roadmap Dialogues, hosted by the PCF Action Group, is a four-part Series, and we very much look forward to having you participate.

• March 4: Opening Dialogue: Why Permafrost Carbon Matters
• March 11: Dialogue 2: Avoiding Permafrost Thaw: Managing Temperature
• March 18: Dialogue 3: Managing Emissions from Permafrost Thaw
• March 25: Dialogue 4: Permafrost Carbon Feedback: Priorities for Research, Policy and Investment

Please register for as many sessions as you’d like to attend, using the link above.

In 2016, the National Science Foundation (NSF) unveiled a set of “Big Ideas,” 10 bold, long-term research and process ideas that identify areas for future investment at the frontiers of science and engineering. The Big Ideas represent unique opportunities to position our Nation at the cutting edge of global science and engineering leadership by bringing together diverse disciplinary perspectives to support convergence research. As such, even though proposals must be submitted to the Directorate for Geosciences when responding to this solicitation, once received, the proposals will be managed by a cross-Directorate team of NSF Program Directors.

Arctic temperatures are warming faster than nearly everywhere else on Earth, with some models projecting that continued warming could produce an ice-free Arctic Ocean in a few decades. The rapid and wide-scale changes occurring in response to this warming portend new opportunities and unprecedented risks to natural environments; social and cultural systems; economic, political and legal systems; and built environments of the Arctic and across the globe. Gaps in scientific observations and the prevalence of interdependent social, natural, and built systems in the Arctic make it challenging to predict the region's future. Understanding and adapting to a changing Arctic requires creative new directions for Arctic-related research, education, workforce development, and leveraging of science, engineering, and technology advances from outside the Arctic.

Navigating the New Arctic (NNA) embodies an important forward-looking response by the Foundation to these profound challenges. NNA seeks innovations in fundamental convergence research across the social, natural, environmental, computing and information sciences, and engineering that address the interactions or connections among natural and built environments and social systems, and how these connections inform our understanding of Arctic change and its local and global effects.

This solicitation requests proposals that fall within one of three tracks: NNA Planning Grants, dedicated to developing convergence research questions and teams to tackle projects of larger scope in the future; NNA Research Grants, aimed to support creative projects on fundamental research that address convergent scientific and engineering challenges related to the rapidly changing Arctic; and NNA Collaboratory Grants, designed to support collaborative teams undertaking research and training initiatives on critical themes of a broad scope related to the New Arctic. This solicitation is the third of what is envisioned to be at least a five-year agency-wide program to support the research and dissemination of new knowledge needed to inform the economy, security, and resilience of the Nation, the larger Arctic region, and the globe with respect to Arctic change.

We are pleased to announce a virtual hosting of the 2020 meeting that had been scheduled to take place in September 2020 at the University of Edinburgh.

We welcome contributions from ALL areas of Antarctic and Antarctic-related research, and contributions are not limited to UK researchers!

The meeting will take place from Monday 22 - Thursday 25 March, 13:00-17:00 GMT each afternoon. We anticipate sessions of 3-4x 15-minute talks interspersed with regular breakout sessions to get everyone mixing. We will also host a virtual poster session or two in cyberspace.

As part of the meeting, we will also host a scoping session for future Antarctic science priorities hosted by the UK National Committee for Antarctic Research, and there will be some activities organised through the UK Polar Network. These will hopefully include an informal panel event where ECRs have the opportunity to socialise with and get career advice from experienced Antarctic researchers, as well as some short talks/workshops.

The deadline for abstract submission is Friday 5 March, 2021 and the deadline for registration is Monday 15 March, 2021.

Registration is free, but for setting up a secure list for the meeting you MUST register by the deadline.

The 16th Conference on Polar Meteorology and Oceanography, sponsored by the American Meteorological Society and organized by the AMS Polar Meteorology and Oceanography Committee, will be held 1-4 June, 2021. Due to continued uncertainty and restrictions on travel associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, this conference will take place entirely virtually.

Papers are solicited on all aspects of polar meteorology and oceanography, including but not limited to:
- Climate variability and change in the polar regions
- Rapid environmental change in the polar regions
- Interactions among polar atmosphere-ocean-land-ice components
- Atmospheric, ocean, land ice, or sea ice physical processes
- High latitude atmospheric and oceanic dynamics
- Weather and climate modelling in the polar regions
- Connections of the polar regions with the tropics and mid-latitudes

Please submit your abstract electronically via the AMS conference website by March 5th 2021 (see the website for instructions). Authors of accepted presentations will be notified via email by mid April 2021.

The conference program will be optimized for a virtual platform. Sessions will take place during the same set of standard work hours for the contiguous United States (e.g., 12pm-5pm Eastern time / 11am-4pm Central time / 10am-3pm Mountain time / 9am-2pm Pacific time). Live oral and poster sessions will not overlap.

Submissions by students, early-career scientists, and underrepresented groups will be prioritized, and limited funds in the form of registration fee waivers are available to support participation. Application instructions will be provided when abstract acceptance notifications are sent.

In a 30-minute presentation followed by a Q & A and discussion, Abigail Steffen and Stephen Arturo Greenlaw (Research Assistants, CAPS, UAF) with Dr. Amy Lauren Lovecraft (CAPS Director) and Maureen Biermann (CAPS Program Coordinator) will discuss the development of climate change policy in the State of Alaska and their forthcoming jointly-authored CAPS report on the topic, as well as range of local climate policy actions that have emerged within Alaska in recent years.

Please follow the link above for more information and to register.

We all need to take climate action to prevent the next pandemic because Climate change is even more destructive than Covid-19, although its effects are less visible, less concentrated, and less present in the industrialized Northern countries that have to date been hit hardest by the coronavirus. Climate change impacts are much harder to trace.

This Global Webinar on Climate Change will focus on a variety of advanced research topics including Carbon Sequestration, Climate Change and Global Warming Evidences, Greenhouse Gases, Pollution, and Climate Change, Climate Hazards, GIS and Remote Sensing, Climate Change & Health, Ecology and Ecosystems, Renewable Energy, Bioenergy, Climate Solutions, Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), Climate Policy and Entrepreneurs Investment Meet.

Join us for two intensive and interesting days of discussing contemporary challenges and new advancements in climate change. We invite you to contribute and help to shape the event through submissions of your research abstracts and e-posters. Also, high-quality research contributions describing original and unpublished results of conceptual, constructive, empirical, experimental, or theoretical work in all areas of Climate Change and Global Warming at this Webinar.

*The International Symposium on Plastics in the Arctic and Sub-Arctic Region (originally scheduled to be held 28-30 September) has been rescheduled to take place online on 2-4 March and 8-9 March 2021 due to COVID-19 pandemic.

The Government of Iceland in collaboration with the Nordic Council of Ministers is hosting an International Symposium on Plastics in the Arctic and Sub-Arctic Region in April 2020 in connection with the Icelandic Chairmanship of the Arctic Council.

Iceland holds the Chairmanship of the Arctic Council from May 2019 to May 2021 and intends during this period to promote discussion on ways and means that may reduce the impact of plastics in the Arctic Marine Environment.

The International Symposium will focus on scientific knowledge of the problem and the best practices to deal with the huge challenge. In this way the symposium is expected to build a foundation of science and deliver information and advice for decision makers.

Main Themes:

• Sources and transport of plastics in the Arctic and sub-Arctic: Shipping, tourism, fishing, and terrestrial sources
• Arctic challenges in waste management strategies
• Methodology for studies on macro-, micro- and nano-plastics
• Monitoring of the Arctic: Setting a baseline for Arctic plastics
• Impact of plastic pollution in the Arctic. Ecotoxicology, toxicology, and socioeconomics
• NordMar Plastic project on international standardization: NordMar Plastic is one of the projects run by the Icelandic chairmanship program in the Nordic Council of Ministers
• Solving the plastic challenge: Best mitigation practices from around the world (ocean-based and land-based)
• Developing a regional action plan for the Arctic. Better strategies in monitoring for the future. Taking
  coordinated actions and developing joint initiatives for different industries

The Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS) Council 2020/21 are working on a project to synthesise and review the applications of Satellite Remote Sensing across the Polar sciences. Our goal is to develop a database and accompanying document that summarises key information about satellite platforms, including (but not limited to): technical characteristics, applications in Polar science, data accessibility and processing requirements.

The motivation behind this project was to create a resource which could be used by the Polar community to inform their research, to be used in teaching and to help improve the understanding and awareness of Satellite Remote Sensing in Polar science. The APECS Remote Sensing Database Project group came together to tackle this challenge head on and build a resource that will be beneficial to the whole community.

For this resource to be as effective as possible, we would like to obtain input from the Polar and Cryosphere community (here, we define the "Polar and Cryosphere community" as anyone studying in one of the three Poles (the Arctic, Antarctic or the Himalayan region), or across the alpine cryosphere). On this basis we would like to ask you to fill out this short survey which we have prepared.

The survey is short (~10 mins to complete) and is designed to obtain information about the satellite-based instruments you are using in your research, the applications of these data sets and other technical characteristics (e.g. processing software). We will collate this information and summarise it within our database and accompanying document.

The deadline for completing the survey is 8th March 2021.

The Arctic Research Consortium of the United States (ARCUS), the Interagency Arctic Research and Policy Committee (IARPC) Arctic STEM collaboration team, and the Arctic STEM Workshop Steering Committee, would like to announce an upcoming National Science Foundation funded workshop: Engaging Rural and Alaska Native Undergraduates and Youth in Arctic STEM, to be held online April 13-15, 2021.

The Arctic is changing at an unprecedented rate, with consequences for Arctic residents—particularly Indigenous Peoples. Along with these changes are new challenges and a growing need to engage and train the next generation in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields that are specifically focused on the Arctic.

The goal of this workshop is to bring together rural and Alaska Native undergraduates and youth, federal agency representatives, researchers on Arctic STEM projects, Indigenous faculty, and community members to discuss the gaps, challenges, opportunities, and successful practices to increase and support the representation of rural and Alaska Native undergraduates and youth in STEM education and career pathways. To ensure this process of learning doesn't replicate the top-down, outside-in model that can be extractive, our virtual workshop will include a collaborative process with all participants and interested organizations. This effort will produce recommendations for systemic change focused on increasing rural and Alaska Native and undergraduates and youth to consider entering STEM fields in Arctic Alaska.

The workshop will discuss the following topics:

• Broadening the understanding of key barriers, challenges, and opportunities in engaging rural and Alaska Native undergraduates and youth in Arctic STEM fields
• Communicating specific strategies and best practices that are successful in engaging rural and Alaska Native undergraduates and youth in Arctic STEM programs and in workforce development
• Share perspectives on what is working and what needs to change
• Discuss ways in which workshop participants can advance individual and collective efforts towards increasing rural Alaskan and - - Alaska Native undergraduates and youth in Arctic STEM education and career pathways

Submit your interest form no later than Monday, March 8, 2021, by 5 PM AKST, if you'd like to participate in this online workshop.

Interested applicants will be notified (via email) of the final decision by Monday, March 15, 2021, of their participation status.

Please follow the link above for more information.

This webinar mini series has been initiated by the SIOS remote sensing service as a response to the new challenges posed by COVID-19 and will take place approximately every month.

Several speakers will present recent observations and opportunities in relation to remote sensing platforms, leaving room for discussion and creating a social experience within the research community.

The aim of this webinar series is to keep you updated, provide a social experience, help to engage the Svalbard research community, and offer you an anchor point to a drifting world!

Programme (times in CET):

• 10:00 - 10:05 Shridhar Jawak (SIOS Remote Sensing Officer): Welcome and updates from SIOS-KC
• 10:05 - 10:15 Renuka Badhe (European Polar Board): European Polar Board - 25 years at the forefront of European Polar research
• 10:15 - 10:25 Anna Maria Trofaier (ESA Climate Office): Climate Science and Arctic Research in the Age of Satellites
• 10:25 - 10:35 Maria Jensen (University centre in Svalbard): TBA
• 10:35 - 10:45 Jenny Baeseman (Baeseman Consulting LLC): Svalbard: A hotspot for international Arctic science collaboration
• 10:45 - 10:55 Verena Mohaupt (Alfred Wegener Institute): Logistics challenges during MOSAiC
• 5 min break and Q + A
• 11:00 - 11:30 Panel discussion: How to improve gender balance and diversity within SIOS?

Fran Ulmer has spent over 45 years in public service. She chaired the U.S. Arctic Research Commission after being appointed by President Obama in 2011 until 2020. Ulmer is a Senior Fellow of the Arctic Initiative in the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center. She served as a Special Advisor to Secretary of State John Kerry on Arctic Science and Policy from 2014 to 2017. In 2010, President Obama appointed her to the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. From 2007 to 2011, Ulmer was chancellor of the University of Alaska Anchorage. She is a member of the Global Board of the Nature Conservancy and on the Board of the National Parks Conservation Association. Ulmer, who earned a J.D. cum laude from the University of Wisconsin Law School, served as an elected official in Alaska for 18 years as the mayor of Juneau, a state representative and as lieutenant governor.

Please register to join this seminar.

Join a listening session to share your story, experiences or data and hear from others in the region. These two-hour listening sessions will start with four, short presentations from people who live and work in the region with time for questions. Then small group discussions to hear from participants on what they have or are experiencing in terms of unusual dryness in the region and how they have prepared for future drought.

Please follow the link above to register.

The UAF Geophysical Institute presents the virtual 2021 Science for Alaska Lecture Series. Tune in at 7 p.m. on Tuesdays to learn about exciting science from measuring the aurora, monitoring whale populations with unmanned aircraft, and participating in the largest Arctic expedition in history. RSVP to watch on Zoom or watch live from the UAF or GI Facebook pages.

Many of Alaska's forest and tundra landscapes are fire-prone, as residents can observe during each warm and dry summer. Alaska scientists and fire managers use satellite imagery and aerial photography to better understand the conditions that lead to wildfire outbreaks and to keep local communities safe. Ultimately, this understanding helps fire managers plan for the future in a changing climate. Join us for an unparalleled view of Alaska from above and discover how scientists use remote sensing imagery to measure burnable vegetation, detect and transmit data on active fires to managers on the ground, and monitor the landscape after the blaze has passed.

Talks are free and for the public. All ages are encouraged to attend. This is the sixth and last in a series of six free, public lectures for the virtual 2021 Science for Alaska Lecture Series.

In support of U.S. Northern Command's Arctic mission, please consider joining Lt General David Krumm, USAF, Commander Alaska Command, Alaska NORAD Region and 11th Air Force and a host of Defense and Security Leaders for Arctic Senior Leader Summit 2021 (ASLS 21) 10-11 March 2021. This event is oriented to addressing senior leader strategic views on the developing range of security and defense matters affecting the Arctic region.

Due to the on-going complications of in-person meetings as a result of COVID 19, Arctic Senior Summit 2021 will be conducted via electronic conference call. Day 1 of ASLS 2021 is focused on Plenary presentations and follow-on strategic discussions. Day 2 ASLS 2021 is a planned tabletop exercise.

International Glaciological Society Global Seminar:

Speaking: Jon Hawkings, Florida State, Martin Tranter, Bristol, Mark Skidmore, Montana State, "Biogeochemistry of Ice Sheet Meltwater: Surface, Bed and Runoff".

Please register in advance for the seminars. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the seminar.

The seminar will also be available afterwards on the Friends of the International Glaciological Society Facebook page so that you can watch it there if technology fails or you can't make it.

The European Climate Research Alliance will celebrate its 10 years anniversary with this high-level event. The event is open to all, and will feature keynote presentations, panel discussion, and options for your interaction.

Please follow the link above for more information and to register.