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The Alaska Arctic Policy Commission (AAPC) has more important work to do in 2014. Together we will strive to gather public input and engage with Alaskan communities, state agencies, federal partners, and the international organizations working in the Arctic.

This is the second meeting in 2014 to focus on implementation and final recommendations.

Meeting dates and locations for 2014:
May 6-7 Anchorage
August 26-27 Kotzebue-Nome (Public testimony reviewed, revisions begun for final report)
November 13-14 Anchorage (Final recommendations reviewed and report finalized)

Rick Thoman of the National Weather Service and Jon Gottschalck of the NOAA Climate Prediction Center will present a webinar titled: El Niño and Alaska - Past, Present, and Future.

Variations in the tropical Pacific ocean and atmosphere are an important contributor to seasonal weather and climate variability over large portions of the globe, including Alaska. The warm phase of this variation, El Niño, is favored to be in place for the the upcoming fall and winter seasons. We will review the current state of El Niño and expected development over the next several months and examine how variations in the tropical Pacific can effect high latitude regions such as Alaska. We finish up with a look at how past El Niño falls and winters have turned out and review the forecast for this coming cold season for Alaska.

Registration is available on the website link above.

The Italian palaeobotanists and palynologists and the Department of Geoscience of the University of Padova and the Institute of Geosciences and Earth Resources - CNR - are sincerely pleased to invite all of you to Padova on August 26-31, 2014 for the forthcoming 9th EPPC.

Present day changes in climate and vegetation, as well as transformations in natural systems and landscape boosted by human forcing, urge the palaeobotanist and palynologist communities to pursue and investigate natural analogs in the geological record. These subjects will be among the topics of the Conference.

All the scientific sessions will be held at the new Department of Geoscience. The renowned Botanical Garden and Museum of Geology and Palaeontology will also be involved. Field-trips are planned in the fascinating landscapes of the Dolomites, Sardinia, Emilia-Romagna, Latium and Tuscany.

In order to favor the attendance of young scientists, accommodation at University facilities and special grants will be provided.

Padova is a charming and historically important city in northeast Italy. Attendants to the Congress will enjoy the beauty of Italian renaissance architecture during late summer evenings, and have a taste of the large variety of the excellent wines and food the region is famous for.

During the SCAR open conference in Auckland (NZ) august 2014, ISMASS (Ice Sheet Mass Balance and Sea Level) proposes a short satellite meeting on "Modelling strategy for ice sheet mass balance projections"

This meeting will take place on tuesday 26 august 2014, 6-8 pm. Auckland Room 3.

This meeting will include a report by Ryan Walker on the outputs of the "Ice sheet MIP for CMIP6" workshop that will be held in July 2014.

Projections of ice sheets mass balance over the next centuries strongly depend on the atmospheric and oceanic forcings. During the previous IPCC assessment (AR5), several groups produced projections but the methods to force the ice sheets models differed substantially. One difficulty comes from the fact that, in the framework of IPCC, atmospheric and oceanic fields from coupled AOGCMs are necessary but are available only by the end of an IPCC Assessment, too late to be used by ice sheet modelers for their own simulations in the corresponding report. For the last IPCC (AR5) report, this reduced for instance the number of ice sheet simulations done with an RCP8.5 scenario. Methods used to initialize ice sheet models, to downscale AOGCM fields, to take into account surface mass balance-elevation feedbacks and to use ocean characteristics to initiate dynamic response of the ice sheets (calving and grounding line retreat) are other examples that have been treated very differently by the various groups. We should now take advantage of the variety of methods applied during IPCC AR5 to compare them and evaluate their impact on the results. The objective is to improve the methods and agree on common framework when producing ice-sheet mass balance model projections for the next 100 years. This should help to derive realistic ranges of uncertainties in ice sheet projections.

If you participate to the SCAR open conference and are interested in the ice sheets contribution to sea level rise you are welcome to attend this session. If you want to give a short (informal) presentation please contact Catherine Ritz(catherine.ritz [at] lgge.obs.ujf-grenoble.fr) before August 15th

The Remote Sensing and Hydrology Symposium is the official meeting of International Commission on Remote Sensing_(ICRS) of IAHS, and its first and second meetings were held in Santa Fe and Jackson Hole, USA. The first and second International Conference of GIS/RS in Hydrology, Water Resources and Environment were held in Three Gorges and Guangzhou, China. The above meetings were attended by large amount participants from all over the world, and selected papers were published in three IAHS red books. The 3rd Remote Sensing and Hydrology Symposium (RSHS’14) and the 3rd International Conference of GIS/RS in Hydrology, Water Resources and Environment (ICGRHWE’14) will be concurrently held in Guangzhou, China in 2014, and is expected to be well attended.

Purpose:
Airborne, terrestrial, mobile and now unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) LiDAR technologies are advancing and are continually evaluated and operationalised to meet hydrological process, water resource modeling and flood risk assessment needs. Furthermore, government jurisdictions around the world are rapidly increasing their inventories of airborne LiDAR datasets covering large regions and entire nations. The recent technical advances and enhanced data accessibility have already facilitated, or create new opportunities, for research and adoption across all areas of the hydrological sciences and water resources disciplines. This session invites papers exemplifying the state of the art in LiDAR remote sensing methods for new water-related applications, operations, research and modeling.

Content:
ALL talks related to the general topic of hydrology and water resources that have a significant LiDAR component will be considered for this session. However, papers demonstrating cutting edge LiDAR technology, applications or operational techniques will be given priority. Areas of particular interest are the use of LiDAR for operational water resource and flood hazard monitoring, the study of mountain snowpack, canopy ET and hydrological processes, the integration of LiDAR and other optical remote sensing products to support combined geomorphic, landcover and spectral watershed hydrological response unit (HRU) and wetland classifications.

Symposium objectives include:

• To review and report the advancements of GIS and Remote Sensing technologies and their applications in Hydrology, Water Resources and Environment
• To share the experiences of scientists, engineers, NGOs and policy makers throughout the globe in the field of Meteorology, Hydrology, Water Resources, Environment, Flood Forecasting and Management, GIS and Remote Sensing
• To provide a forum for exploring and investigating Three Gorges dam and Reservoir operations after its completion.
• To provide a platform to people from industry to exhibit their hardware and software products in GIS and Remote Sensing technologies.

More information is available on the symposium website.

Goal: This Summer School will provide a group of 30 Ph.D. students and junior scientists specializing in sea level research with a basis in knowledge, understanding and tools for the study of global and regional sea level change and its variability.

Scope: This Summer School will cover a wide range of physical processes contributing to sea level change. The main focus is on sea level observations by tide gauges, satellite missions, GPS and their use in scientific research.

Lecturers: Peter Clarke (Newcastle University), Eric Leuliette (NOAA), John Moore (Beijing Normal University and University of Lapland), Remko Scharroo (EUMETSAT), Philip Woodworth (NOC), Caroline Katsman (KNMI), Roderik van de Wal (IMAU-UU), Bert Vermeersen (NIOZ and TUD), Miren Vizcaino (TUD), the NEMO Team (Ronald Brouwer, Matthieu de Schipper, Sierd de Vries, Jaap van Thiel de Vries, - TUD), Svetlana Jevrejeva (NOC, convenor) and Riccardo Riva (TUD, convenor).

Practical information:
The school is open to PhD students and junior post-doc researchers working on related subjects. The registration fee is EUR 200 and includes full board, excursion and course material. Housing is available at a rate of EUR 350 for the whole week.

To register, please send an e-mail to SeaLevel-SummerSchool-CiTG [at] tudelft.nl before 15 May 2014. Your application should include a PDF document containing a statement why you want to participate in this course, your affiliation and name of supervisor, a description of your research project (~200 words) and a curriculum vitae. After this date you will receive notification whether your application has been accepted and instructions about how to wire the registration fee, which needs to be received before arrival in Delft.

Housing for non-local participants is in the campus hotel and will be charged directly to the guests upon arrival in Delft. Accommodation is in shared twin rooms: if you wish to share a room with somebody specific, please make this known upon registration.

The Royal Society of New Zealand would like to invite you to Auckland, New Zealand in 2014 for XXXIII SCAR Biennial Meetings and Open Science Conference. The Council of Managers of National Antarctic Programs (COMNAP) Symposium and Business Meetings will also be held in Auckland followed by their annual meeting in Christchurch.

Important dates for the conference include:
Call for Abstracts Open: 1 October 2013
Closing Date for Submission of Abstracts: 14 February 2014
Approximate date of acceptance of abstract: 1 April 2014

If you have any queries please contact us at scar2014 [at] tcc.co.nz.

The Antarctic Near-Shore and Terrestrial Observing System (ANTOS) is proposed as a Life Sciences Expert Group which will survey the impact of change on Antarctic life. A workshop aimed at developing an implementation framework for ANTOS will be held in Auckland, New Zealand on Friday, 22 August 2014, immediately prior to the start of the XXXIII SCAR meetings.

For more information, please download the workshop leaflet: http://www.scar.org/events/ANTOS_Workshop_NZ_Aug14.pdf.

The longest climatological glacier mass balance series is 100 years old. Since 1914 the gain in winter snow, and the summer melt are measured twice a year on Claridenfirn, Swiss Alps. This unique and detailed mass balance series was initiated by Greenland pioneer Alfred de Quervain, among others, and continued for many year by Dr. Robert Billwiler, director of the Swiss Meteorological Office.

Symposium at ETH Zurich with scientific talks emphasizing the importance of the data series for different scientific studies (22 August). Speakers include:

• Prof. em. Atsumu Ohmura, ETH Zürich
• Prof. Ed Waddington, Univ. Washington, USA
• Prof. Regine Hock, Univ. Alaska, USA
• Dr. Matthias Huss, ETH Zürich
• Prof. Martin Funk, ETH Zürich
• Dr. Mischa Croci-Maspoli MeteoSchweiz
• Giovanni Kappenberger, ex MeteoSchweiz

Most presentations of the symposium will be given in English.

Excursion to Claridenfirn glacier (23-24 August):

• Celebration and overnight stay in Claridenhütte (Swiss Alpine Club hut)
• Visit of the sites on the glacier

Participation in the symposium is free of charge. The costs for lodging and dinner in Clariden hut (ca. CHF 60) and travel are paid directly by the participant.

The Clariden hut provides dinner, breakfast, and bunk beds with covers. It is advised to bring a thin silk sleeping bag.The Clariden hut is located next to the glacier, and is a 3-4 hour mountain hike on marked trails.

Equipment: Required are mountain boots, warm and rain-proof clothes, hat, mittens. For the excursion on the glacier a climbing harness, crampons and an ice ax are required.

IARPC Collaboration Teams meet on a regular basis to implement the Arctic Research Plan: FY 2013-2017. Most meetings are open to the Arctic research community. Collaboration teams facilitate communication and collaboration between Federal agencies, the academic community, industry, non-governmental organizations, and State, local and tribal groups.

Contact Sara Bowden, bowden [at] arcus.org, if you would like to join this meeting.