Past Events

To promote the analysis and synthesis of Arctic data, as well as to inform ongoing development of the data repository, the Arctic Data Center is soliciting requests for proposals for a Synthesis Working Group, with research to begin by August 2017.

Funding is available for one Working Group, consisting of hosting two meetings at the Arctic Data Center in Santa Barbara, California, of approximately 15 participants each, over an anticipated 1-1.5 year period.

Proposals must focus on Arctic-related research issues, and primarily (but not necessarily exclusively) involve the analysis and synthesis of data contained within the Arctic Data Center Repository. Proposals will be reviewed by the Arctic Data Center’s Science Advisory Board for intellectual merit and broader impacts, but consideration will also be made as to the availability and sources of data needed by the project, as well as how the project will serve to evaluate and inform future directions for the Arctic Data Center’s services. Principal Investigators are strongly encouraged to contact the Arctic Data Center to briefly discuss ideas before submitting proposals.

Call for proposals closes April 26, 2017.

For more information, please follow the link above.

The Western Alaska Interdisciplinary Science Conference (WAISC) will highlight regional scientific efforts that provide a more interdisciplinary approach to scientific inquiry, resource management, and fishery resource development and marketing. Organizers welcome submissions from all individuals and organizations collecting and disseminating information in the industries of western Alaska.

Western Alaska is experiencing a period of rapid change. WAISC seeks to bring scientists, resource managers, industry experts, fishery business enthusiasts, seafood product development/safety specialists and resource users together to share the state-of-the-science, the latest innovations in technology, and local observations, and to discuss the needs and concerns of each stakeholder group.

The Western Alaska Interdisciplinary Science Conference and Forum seeks oral and poster presentations focused on the following topics:

• Seafood processing and development/food security
• Renewable energy and energy efficiency
• Fishing business and operations
• Climate change adaptation
• Bycatch, pollock allocation, rationalization
• Vessel traffic, oil spill response, and marine accidents
• Building effective local environmental observer networks
• Rural education
• Waste management
• Marine policy/coastal management

Abstracts may be submitted online through February 24.

Online registration is now open. The registration fee is $100.

Planning is underway, so check the website for updates and for more information.

Please join us for a real-time event with teacher Jennifer Baldacci broadcasting live from Toolik Field Station in Alaska. Dr. Cory Williams will join Jenn to discuss the 2017 field season working on Arctic Ground Squirrel Studies.

X-STEM - presented by the U.S. Department of Defense - is an Extreme STEM Symposium for middle through high school students featuring interactive presentations by leading STEM innovators who aim to empower and inspire kids about careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

As we celebrate Black History Month, we'd like to introduce you to key African American STEM innovators who as Nifty Fifty speakers will be engaging students about their work and careers in STEM during school visits throughout the Washington, D.C. metro area, and on April 28th will serve as presenters at the X-STEM Symposium, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense, at the D.C. Convention Center.

Who Should Attend:
Students with a strong interest in STEM, educators and parents. X-STEM presentations will be geared toward a middle and high school level audience (grades 6 to 12). STEM professionals are welcome to attend the student talks by registering. Student attendees will have the opportunity to sit in on multiple engaging presentations from over 25 STEM mentors and industry leaders.

Application deadline to host a Nifty Fifty speakers is Friday, February 17th.

Follow the link above to learn about the speakers and to register.

The 3rd Blue Planet Symposium will convene 31 May-2 June 2017 at the conference center of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)'s Center for Weather and Climate Prediction in College Park, Maryland.

Blue Planet is an initiative of the Group of Earth Observations (GEO). GEO aims to address global challenges and improve decision making by coordinating and developing Earth observation efforts among participating governments and organizations. The overall goal of Blue Planet Initiative is to ensure the sustained development and use of ocean and coastal observations for the benefit of society. Blue Planet is a network of networks made up of participants from a variety of existing international organizations, regional organizations, national institutes, universities, government agencies, project groups, and other interested parties.

The symposium will serve as a forum for discussion of societal information needs resulting from the important role the oceans play in Earth's life-support system and the challenge of minimizing the impacts of human activities on the oceans while utilizing the resources of the oceans to meet our needs. The symposium will also be a platform for the participating communities to exchange information on their activities and identify related potential pilot and prototype projects to focus on in the coming years.

The symposium will address four sub-themes:

• The changing oceans
• Threats from pollution, warming, and acidification
• Processes and life at the interfaces with the oceans
• Sustainable use of ocean resources

The symposium is open to scientists, researchers, and students from academia, industry, government, users of ocean observation data and information, and other stakeholders engaged in monitoring, understanding, and managing the oceans.

Registration deadline: 28 April 2017.

For more information about the symposium and to register, please follow the link above.

Siberian Federal University invites to the International Summer School “Monitoring and Early Warnings in Water Governance” in Krasnoyarsk, Russia on July 10–23, 2017.

The school will be the second in the series of summer schools to be organised from 2016 to 2018 under the Jean-Monnet project “Systems for monitoring and responses to early warnings — EU experience for Russia”.

The School faculty includes the resident faculty of Siberian Federal University and guests from Hungary, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden (the list of faculty will be published in the late February).

The Summer School on water governance is organised by Siberian Federal University (Krasnoyarsk, Russia). It is designed as a research training exercise, with the Krasnoyarsk Water Reservoir (also known as the Sea of Krasnoyarsk, the Eurasia-largest water reservoir) on the river of Yenisei and the lake of Baikal (the world largest freshwater body) set as case studies.

Deadline for applications is April 28, 2017.

For more information and to apply, please see the website above.

The organizing committee from Swiss Polar Institute calls for poster proposals by PhD and Early Career Researchers to "High Altitudes meet High Latitudes: Globalizing Polar Issues" Conference, September 11-12, 2017 Switzerland, Crans-Montana.

We invite contributions expending upon the main topics addressed at the conference. We are encouraging proposals that highlight the relations between High Altitudes and High Latitudes and are looking for a wide variety of disciplinary perspectives, including physical sciences, earth and bio sciences, as well as social sciences and humanities. In addition to a conventional poster presentation, all selected posters presentations will take part in flash-talk sessions (120' for each session).

In order to mobilize PhD and Early career researchers from European and non-European research communities, we will provide partial travel and accommodation support (up to 1200 CHF). Participants will be selected on the basis of an extended abstract (up to 600 words).

Application and deadline:

Deadline for abstracts: April 30, 2017
Notification of acceptance: May 29, 2017
Deadline for a Flash-talk presentation: September 5, 2017

Please, send abstracts to spi.cransmontana [at] epfl.ch

The University of the Arctic Thematic Network on Permafrost offers an International Permafrost Summer Field School in Fairbanks Alaska, July 31-­ August 12 2017. We welcome senior bachelor and graduate students, who are interested in obtaining an overall knowledge about permafrost.

The course will offer insights into:

• Permafrost history and its distribution globally.
• Permafrost related natural hazards and hydrological problems.
• Permafrost temperatures in various parts of the World – climatic and other controls.
• Methods of permafrost observations, focusing on drilling, coring and instrumentation.
• Permafrost databases and their use in permafrost analyses.
• How does permafrost affect local community infrastructure and cultural life?
• Interaction between carbon and water in permafrost landscapes.
• How sensitive are permafrost landforms towards climate change?

Application deadline is April 30 2017.
Send CV and short motivation letter (less than 1 page) to uarcticpermafrost [at] gmail.com.
There is no tuition fee for this course.
Course credits (may obtain 3 US credits) is not mandatory and require additional cost for the course.

Accommodation for students during the course will be in reindeer camp and some field site, and it will cost for meals.

For further questions: Kenji Yoshikawa (kyoshikawa [at] alaska.edu) or uarcticpermafrost [at] gmail.com

The International Glaciological Society will hold an International Symposium on ‘Polar Ice, Polar Climate, Polar Change’. The symposium will be held on the University of Colorado Boulder campus at the University Memorial Center and other campus venues on 14–19 August 2017.

The changes of the past 15 years in Arctic and Antarctic sea ice and the ice sheets appear to be a prelude to new levels of impact of the polar regions on global climate and sea level. The single-year ice system is expanding in the Arctic, with processes comparable to those of Antarctic sea ice. Antarctic sea ice extent is highly variable, and is responding to shifts in ocean circulation and wind patterns. Both polar sea ice systems interact in important ways with climate and with the adjacent ice sheets.

Much of this growing awareness and understanding has come from the tremendous success of satellite and airborne remote sensing, supporting both process studies and modeling of the geophysical basis for observed changes. The proposed symposium would both summarize new, high-profile results from the international research communities and provide a synthesis of current understanding as climate change impacts continue.

The goals of this symposium are:

• To provide a forum for presenting the current best observational data of all aspects of sea ice and polar ice sheets in both hemispheres, and their ongoing changes.
• To present and discuss results from models of ongoing polar climate and cryosphere processes, and interactions between sea ice and the climate system.
• To examine the likely future course of the sea ice, ice sheet and polar climate systems as revealed by coupled models.
• To entrain the global polar science community, at all stages of career development, in discussing the state and direction of the Earth’s polar regions.

A mixture of oral and poster sessions, interlaced with ample free time, forms the general framework of the symposium, which is intended to facilitate exchange of scientific information between participants in an informal manner. Additional activities include an opening icebreaker, a symposium banquet and a selection of activities during a Thursday (16 August) afternoon mid-symposium break. There is a pre-symposium geology and landscape excursion planned, and a post-symposium excursion to the path of a solar eclipse on Monday 21 August.

Participants wishing to present a paper (either oral or poster) at the symposium will be required to submit an abstract by 1 May 2017.

The Climate Change Education Partnership Alliance (CCEP) invites you to participate in its 2017 webinar series. This series will compliment the newly released Climate Change Education: Effective Practices for Working with Educators, Scientists, Decision Makers, and the Public guide.

Produced by the CCEP Alliance, this guide provides recommendations for effective education and communication practices when working with different types of audiences. While effective education has been traditionally defined as the acquisition of knowledge, Alliance programs maintain a broader definition of “effective” to include the acquisition and use of climate change knowledge to inform decision-making.

Please use the link above to register for one or more of the webinars in this series. Once registered, information on how to connect will be sent within a week of scheduled webinar. If you have any questions, please email agingras [at] uri.edu.

Working in Informal Environments

Presenters: John Anderson (NNOCCI, New England Aquarium), Raluca Ellis (CUSP, The Franklin Institute), Deborah Wasserman (MADE CLEAR, COSI)

About 240 million people learn about climate change issues through informal settings, such as television, the internet, the workplace, museums, zoos, and aquariums. Surveys of visitors to U.S. zoos, aquariums, and national parks indicate that there is far more interest and concern about climate change among visitors to informal science institutions than the average U.S. adult. This presents a significant opportunity for learning about climate change in informal environments. Join us for this webinar to hear from three CCEP Alliance projects about effective and tested practices in engaging informal audiences. Raluca Ellis, program director of Climate & Urban Systems Partnership (CUSP), will discuss how multiple organizations, “tabling” under a common message at festivals was successful at breaking down barriers to having positive conversations about climate change. John Anderson, Project Director for the National Network for Ocean and Climate Change Interpretation (NNOCCI) will illustrate how social sciences have helped to shape productive conversations at hundreds of informal science education organizations across the U.S., and Deborah Wasserman, Senior Research Associate for the Lifelong Learning Group at COSI’s Center for Evaluation and Research will share how the MADE CLEAR Informal Climate Change Education (ICCE) community of practice has evolved to meet informal educators’ needs for peer relationships and professional development that would strengthen their confidence and strategies for integrating climate change education into their practice.

Organizers of the 15th Annual Climate Prediction Application Science Workshop (CPASW) announce a call for abstracts. The theme of this workshop is "Understanding Extreme Events and Decision-Maker Needs in the Context of Climate Variability and Change".

The 2017 CPASW will be hosted by the NOAA National Weather Service Climate Services Branch, the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy (ACCAP), and other climate services partners. It will bring together climate researchers, service producers, decision-makers, and other users to accelerate developments in the research and applications of climate information for societal decision-making.

Focus areas for this workshop include:

• Climate information applications at local, regional, and global scales related to preparedness and management for weather and climate extremes
• Climate services for coastal and indigenous communities in high-latitude areas, including the Arctic
• Best practices of observing, documenting, and communicating climate information relevant for national, tribal and international collaborations
• Service delivery coordination and decision support for planning, resource allocation, sustainable development, and environmental management needed for building resilient communities.

Short-term climate variability and long-term climate change as well as attribution science are cross-cutting concerns for all of these focus areas, especially in preparedness activities for extreme events and supporting critical decision-making for several socio-economic sectors.

Organizers invite abstracts that address the use of climate data and products including monitoring, predictions, and projections in all of the focus areas listed above, particularly for extreme events. Papers highlighting best practices in the areas of communication and outreach, decision support tools, and preparedness methods for advancing societal adaptation are also invited. The target audience for this workshop includes planners, managers, practitioners, researchers, service providers, and tribal environmental coordinators and leaders dealing with climate-related challenges.

Abstract submission deadline: 13 January 2017

For more information or to submit an abstract, go to the link above.

For more information, contact:
Jenna Meyers
Email: Jenna.Meyers [at] noaa.gov
Phone: 301-427-9113

Tina Buxbaum
Email: tmbuxbaum [at] alaska.edu
Phone: 907-474-7812

The Arctic Research Consortium of the U.S. (ARCUS) is pleased to announce the next Arctic Research Seminar Series event featuring Robert
Corell, Principal of the Global Environmental Technology Foundation. The event will be held in the ARCUS D.C. office at 1201 New York Avenue, NW Washington D.C. at 12:00-1:00 p.m. EDT.

This seminar will also be available as a webinar live-stream for those unable to attend in person.

Registration is required for this event.

The ARCUS Arctic Research Seminar Series brings some of the leading Arctic researchers to Washington, D.C. to share the latest findings and what they mean for decision-making. These seminars will be of interest to federal agency officials, congressional staff, non-governmental organizations, associations, and the public.

This seminar titled "Why the Arctic Matters at All?" will be presented by Robert Corell and will discuss the sweeping changes occurring in the earth's climate system that will impact communities in the Arctic and all over the world.

For more information about Robert W. Corell, please follow the link above.

This event is a brown-bag lunch that will be held in the ARCUS D.C. office (1201 New York Avenue, NW Washington D.C. Fourth Floor). Cookies and beverages will be provided. A live webinar is also available to those unable to attend in person. Instructions for accessing the event online will be sent to webinar registrants prior to the event.

For those of you on Twitter, we also invite you to join us in live-tweeting the event using the hashtag #arcuswebinar.

For questions, contact:
Brit Myers
Email: brit [at] arcus.org

Register now to join a free webinar to recap the themes discussed at the Polar Research Board workshop Antarctic Sea Ice Variability in the Southern Ocean-Climate System, and explore new findings that have emerged since the workshop took place.

The workshop, which took place in January 2016, focused on the potential mechanisms driving increases in the extent and concentration of the sea ice surrounding Antarctic from the late 1970s until 2015?increases that were not reproduced by climate models, and that came despite the overall warming of the global climate and the region. Leading scientists discussed the possible drivers of changes in Antarctic sea ice and ways to better understand the complex relationship between Antarctic sea ice and the broader ocean-climate system (summarized in the Workshop Proceedings).

The webinar will feature presentations from the chair of the workshop planning committee, Julienne Stroeve of the University of Colorado, Boulder, and from committee members Marika Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, and Marilyn Raphael of the University of California, Los Angeles. Please tune in!

The Open Science Meeting (OSM) and the associated Young Scientists Meeting (YSM) are the premier scientific events of Past Global Changes (PAGES), a core project of Future Earth and a scientific partner of the World Climate Research Programme.

PAGES and the local organizing committee, Quaternary Terrestrial Environments group (Pyrenean Institute of Ecology-CSIC), welcome you to Spain.

Dates:

• The 3rd PAGES YSM will be held in Morillo de Tou (approximately 100km north of Zaragoza) from 7-9 May 2017.
• The 5th PAGES OSM will be held in Zaragoza from 9-13 May 2017.

Theme:

The theme of the OSM and YSM is "Global Challenges for our Common Future: a paleoscience perspective."

These meetings will fully reflect the PAGES structure and themes of climate, environment and humans, the strengthening of the connections between PAGES working groups and the increasing importance of an interdisciplinary approach.

The Alaska Arctic Council Host Committee — in partnership with the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Anchorage Museum, and other community groups — is pleased to present the Week of the Arctic, with presentations, workshops, receptions and cultural celebrations highlighting key themes and accomplishments of the Arctic Council and broader Arctic efforts.

Other activities in Fairbanks and Anchorage will provide outreach and education opportunities for participants and interested Arctic stakeholders.

The U.S. chairmanship of the Arctic Council concludes with a ministerial meeting in Fairbanks May 11, 2017, where accomplishments under the U.S. chairmanship and the transition to Finland’s chairmanship will be celebrated with the Week of the Arctic.

See the link above for more information and to see the full program of activities during the week.

The Arctic Broadband Forum will bring together educators, researchers and industry from across the World to discuss the challenges, success and potential of telecommunications and broadband deployment in the Arctic.

Specific emphasis will be placed on the role of broadband and digital technologies on the cultural preservation and self-determination of indigenous populations throughout the Arctic.

For more information and to register, please follow the link above.

The Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee (IARPC) is initiating implementation of the Arctic Research Plan 2017-2021. SEARCH's Permafrost Action Team lead Christina Schädel (NAU), Andrew Balser (DOD), Benjamin Jones (USGS), will be leading the Permafrost Collaboration Team (PCT), and they are inviting all interested researchers and stakeholders to participate in their first meeting on 9 May at 10 AM Alaska Time (2 pm EST).

At this meeting, Torre Jorgenson from Alaska Ecoscience will talk about 'Progress toward understanding the response of permafrost to climate change in Alaska'.

Why participate in IARPC Collaborations?
While the IARPC Arctic Research Plan is a U.S. Federal government product and responsibility, IARPC recognizes that implementation cannot be accomplished without the research community. Therefore, collaboration teams and the IARPC collaboration website are open to participation by all stakeholders including U.S. Federal government program managers and scientists from State, international, academic, NGO, and industry organizations. The IARPC collaboration teams and website have created a new level of transparency in the research endeavor where information is flowing between the community and Federal agencies. Think of it as a regular science workshop, but on an ongoing and monthly basis.

Communicate regularly with Federal program managers and the research community. The conversations enabled through IARPC Collaborations have created an unprecedented level of information exchange. The research community benefits from the ongoing, monthly meetings where they can present their research to peers and program managers and learn about new research efforts within their field. Program officers, always eager to learn about research activities and priorities from the community, are able to do so on a regular basis. Program managers learn about one another’s programs, and identify synergies between programs and programmatic gaps.

See your research results in reports to Congress and Federal agencies. Reporting on implementation of the Arctic Research Plan goes to the IARPC principals, chaired by the Director of the National Science Foundation and made up of representatives of 14 Federal agencies, and to Congress. Anyone may submit their contributions to our Arctic Research Plan and see their research in these reports.

How do I participate?
If you don’t already have one, request an account on IARPC Collaborations, where information is shared among the 1000+ members of our research community. Once you have an account, join our collaboration team and you will automatically be notified of upcoming collaboration team meetings via email. You may also RSVP and view the connection information for our next meeting here.

We hope you will consider participating in PCT meetings, posting information on the website and getting involved in a meaningful way that benefits you and the work you are doing. If you should have any questions, feel free to contact me.

Christina Schädel - Network Coordinator and Research Scientist, Northern Arizona University, USA. christina.schaedel [at] nau.edu

© Permafrost Carbon Network

Coordinated Activity by the Permafrost Action Team of SEARCH
Study of Environmental Arctic Change

This symposium examines the impacts of the environment, especially climate change and variability, on the dynamics of arctic and subarctic species of commercial, subsistence, and ecological importance. We will focus on the effects of warming, loss of sea ice, ocean acidification, and oceanographic variability on the distribution, phenology, life history, population dynamics, and interactions of these species and how a better understanding of these effects can inform the assessment and management of fish and invertebrate populations in a changing ocean for the benefit of affected communities.

Abstracts for oral presentations and posters are invited from fishery, marine, and social scientists as well as managers, industry, and representatives of affected communities.

Abstract submission deadline: Sunday, 15 January 2017.

This inaugural webinar for the Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee's (IARPC) new Permafrost Collaboration Team (PCT) will feature
a presentation by Torre Jorgenson from Alaska Ecoscience titled "Progress toward understanding the response of permafrost to climate
change in Alaska."

To join this webinar attendees must request an account on the IARPC collaborations website above.

The PCT is a new team created as part of Arctic Research Plan 2017-2021. The team's scope of activities will include implementation of research objectives and performance elements including, improving understanding of how climate, physiography, terrain conditions, vegetation, and patterns of disturbance interact to control permafrost dynamics; improving and expanding understanding of how warming and thawing of permafrost influence the vulnerability of soil carbon, including the potential release of carbon dioxide and methane to the atmosphere; continuing to improve integration of empirically measured permafrost processes into models that predict how climate change, hydrology, ecosystem shifts, and disturbances interact within terrestrial and freshwater aquatic systems to impact permafrost evolution, degradation, and feedbacks from local landscapes to the circum-Arctic; and determining how warming and thawing permafrost impacts infrastructure and human health.

For more information about the PCT, go to:
http://www.iarpccollaborations.org/teams/Permafrost

For more information about IARPC Collaboration Teams, go to:
http://www.iarpccollaborations.org/index.html

For questions, contact:
Andrew Balser
Email: andrew.w.balser [at] usace.army.mil

This workshop will focus on events that drive damage to Arctic vegetation, their causes, and consequences. With increasing frequency of
events causing damage to Arctic vegetation and an increasing appreciation of the diversity of different events that can cause browning, this workshop provides an opportunity to discuss Arctic browning drivers, subsequent consequences, prepare outputs, and develop future collaborations.

Events of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Extreme winter warming
• Icing
• Frost-drought
• Herbivore and pathogen outbreaks
• Tundra fire

The first part of the workshop will include presentations and discussions of Arctic browning caused by climatic and biological events.
The second part will include break-out groups to focus on workshop outputs, collaborations, and future opportunities.

Registration deadline: 8 March 2017.

To register, go to:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdNibbE62n-gCZ-L8HCTwQCarht2Xw…