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The Exchange brings an evolutionary concept in networking and business information delivery. The concept is designed to meet specific business objectives during two days for promoting cooperation, coordination, and interaction among the Arctic communities addressing key issues such as sustainable business development and regional protection. As more and more data has confirmed that the Arctic is extremely rich in oil and gas reserves, locations such as Greenland and the Barents Sea have seen a huge growth in interest from the hydrocarbon industry. Despite the opportunities offered, there are many challenges that may hinder operations. The presence of cold temperatures, ice and a lack of infrastructure pose logistical problems that make exploration expensive and risky.

Key Components include:

• International collaboration in the Arctic;
• Addressing the competitive environment of Arctic oil & gas projects;
• Are we properly prepared for safe and sustainable development of Arctic resources?
• The policy, market drivers and constraints to offshore Arctic oil & gas development activities in Norway, Russia and Greenland and
• The importance of using local expertise in the Arctic advances in iceberg management to reduce risk and uncertainty the operational and transportation challenges and solutions.

Sharing knowledge, vision and experience, EUMETSAT and its US partners will jointly organize the combined 2013 EUMETSAT Meteorological Satellite Conference & the 19th Satellite Meteorology, Oceanography and Climatology Conference of the American Meteorological Society on 16-20 September in the Austrian capital city of Vienna. The European meteorological satellite organization and the American Meteorological Society will be supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Austria’s national weather service, the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics (ZAMG) and the European Meteorological Society (EMS).

The overarching theme will be water vapour, clouds, and precipitation, and the use of current and planned Earth observation systems to improve our understanding and adequately monitor, trends and variability in the global hydrological system. Weather, ocean and climate observations as well as atmospheric composition will of course continue to be mainstay topics.

Deadline for abstracts: 22 February 2013.

Organizers of a conference entitled 'Protecting the Sacred: Recognition of Sacred Sites of Indigenous Peoples for Sustaining Nature and Culture in Northern and Arctic Regions' announce a call for abstracts. This international conference will be held 11-13 September 2013 in Rovaniemi and Pyha, Finland.

The conference is organized by the Arctic Centre at the University of Lapland in Rovaniemi, the Department of Geography at the University of Montreal, and the Thematic Network on Arctic Law at the University of the Arctic. It will bring together scientists, sacred natural sites custodians, Indigenous peoples' organizations, policymakers, and conservation and civil society leaders. The intent is to evaluate options for international and national law, policy, and practice in order to better recognize, safeguard, conserve, and manage sacred natural sites of Indigenous peoples in northern and arctic regions.

Abstract submission deadline: Thursday, 28 February 2013.

The course will provide a basic introduction to the dynamics of glaciers and ice sheets with a focus on ice-climate interactions. The course is meant for Ph.D. students that work on (or will soon start working on) a glaciology-related climate project. The registration fee will be € 600. This includes lodging, full board, course material and excursion.

Lecturers include: T. Blunier, B. de Boer, O. Eisen, A. Fowler, H. Gudmundsson, A. Jenkins, N. Karlsson, A. Kääb, F. Nick, F. Pattyn, A. Stroeven, W.J. van de Berg, J. Oerlemans (convenor).

Send your application to the convenor (j.oerlemans [at] uu.nl), before 11 May 2013.
You will be notified about the decision of the Selection Committee by 14 June 2013.

Your application should include:

• A short statement why you want to participate in this course
• Affiliation and name of supervisor
• A description of your research project (~200 words)
• A curriculum vitae
  Please supply this information as a single PDF file.

The Alaska World Affairs Council will hold a Tuesday Lunch Program lecture featuring Chair of the US Arctic Research Commission Fran Ulmer and Ambassador David Balton, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Oceans and Fisheries in the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, U.S. Department of State.

RSVP to info [at] alaskaworldaffairs.org or 276-8038 by Sunday, September 8th.

The overall goal of the workshop is to identify similarities and differences in how cyberinfrastructure programs serve polar sciences versus other disciplines. The workshop and the report will address engagement and connections between computer and polar sciences concerning what can be accomplished in the short-term (1-5 years) and long-term (5-10+ years). The outcomes of this workshop will inform the Polar Cyberinfrastructure Program at the National Science Foundation concerning the past and current polar cyberinfrastrucutre activities and will provide support for a community-driven design and architecture development of a polar science cyberinfrastructure that is aligned with the following end-users' needs: (1) long-term sustainable curatorship, standardization, management and discovery of data and metadata; visualization, manipulation, and analysis; (2) use of high performance computing (HPC) for direct and sustainable advances in current polar research; (3) big data and data access; (4) interoperability with data from other domains; (5) e-learning and educational tools based on cyberinfrastructure components; and (6) virtual organizations.

The workshop will be structured to provide responses to the following questions and requests:

• What cyberinfrastructure (CI) support is currently available to the polar science community and do those existing elements need to be upgraded?
• Create a ranked list of science drivers and challenges made tractable by transformative cyberinfrastructure that the community aims to tackle on a 1-5 year and 5-10 year time frame (a) within polar sciences, and (b) within the Arctic and (c) Antarctic communities.
• Develop a list of data and cyberinfrastructure barriers/limits to further advancing polar science and provide suggestions to overcome these barriers.
• Produce a list of known community resources that the workshop participants feel need to be developed, created, or made easier in terms of cyberinfrastructure to allow them to do the important science they want to do now and in the future.
• Create use cases that illustrate the transformational science that could take place provided sufficient cyberinfrastructure and data tools.

The workshop will host approximately 60 in person participants, comprised of both invited and open-registration attendees. Invitations are being sent to potential participants that have been initially identified by the organizing committee. If you are interested in attending, please be sure to fill out the brief form near the bottom of the workshop website: http://www.pgc.umn.edu/meetings/cyber2013. Given the limited number of participants, the Organizing Committee will review all submissions and notify applicants by August 5th about the outcome of their registration.

Submission deadline: Thursday, 1 August 2013.

The first circular is now posted for the 7th International Workshop on Ice Drilling Technology. The workshop will be held at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA from 9-13 September 2013.

Following in the footsteps of the six previous ice drilling technology workshops held between 1974 and 2006, the 7th International Workshop on Ice Drilling Technology will take a comprehensive look at the latest technological innovations in ice drilling technology, including ice coring, borehole logging, subglacial sampling, core logging, handling and field logistics. The workshop will promote the exchange of knowledge, ideas, and experience among many countries and individuals who are involved in ice drilling projects. People active in the technical side of ice drilling are especially encouraged to participate, as are technical representatives from nations who have recently begun ice drilling programs for the first time.

The symposium will cover recent measurements and signal processing advances that are leading to new discoveries. It will also examine the observational needs of the next-generation ice sheet models, and how radioglaciology can support modeling requirements.

The overarching purpose of this meeting is to discuss the latest technical improvements in radars and signal-processing techniques for polar research, to present recent measurements, and to report on analyses and interpretations of recent observations. Additionally, the meeting will provide an opportunity to discuss observational requirements for radars that will most benefit and support development and validation of next-generation ice-sheet models.

The symposium will consist of a mixture of oral and poster sessions, with free time planned to allow participants to exchange scientific information in an informal setting. The symposium features two local excursions: either a visit to a working ranch or the world-class Nelson Museum of Art. Haskell Indian Nations University dance troupe will perform during a dinner buffet and a symposium banquet will be held.

We would welcome your participation and encourage you to submit a paper to the symposium.

The Arctic Collaborative Environment (ACE) is an internet-based, open-access, Arctic-focused, information exploitation, environmental research and decision-support system that integrates data from existing remote sensing assets, products from existing and new environmental models, and in-situ reporting to provide monitoring, analysis, and geo-referenced visualization based on earth observation data and modeling. These products may be layered within tailored map projections and integrated into a community-based public or private collaborative communication and coordination environment, available to anyone with access to the public Internet. ACE was developed to enable local, regional, and international cooperation and coordination on long-term environmental planning and near-term actions in response to climatic, environmental and situational changes occurring in the Arctic Region.

A Technical Review and Interchange Meeting (TRIM) to introduce and train users to confidently utilize this system will be convened at the International Arctic Research Center (IARC) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks on September 9 & 10, 2013.

The major objectives of the ACE TRIM will be to:

• Provide general background for the ACE Project
• Familiarize the user community with the current system and capabilities of the ACE tool
• Provide adequate training for individual users to apply the system for their specific analyses
• Stimulate discussions on potential applications to support research user communities
• Stimulate initial discussions on potential applications to support Arctic related educational activities and proposal opportunities
• Establish a collaborative forum for discussion of potential proposal topics for research using the ACE tool
• Identify specific potential new partners for collaborative investigations, proposal opportunities and timeframes for action
• Identify and prioritize new and enhanced capabilities and data sets desired by the research and education user communities

Participation will be limited to 40 individuals. Registration for the ACE TRIM is available here: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/7774067445

No funds are available to provide participant travel or per diem support; however, there will be no cost for attendance.

This meeting is hosted by IARC and the University of Alaska Arctic Region Supercomputing Center (ARSC). ARSC is a high-performance computing (HPC) research unit of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. IARC is an international focal point for synthesis of our understanding of the Arctic system and the application of this understanding to prediction of the evolution of the Arctic system over the next century. Our goal is to reduce the uncertainty in predictions of Arctic change. In order to do so, we must understand ongoing changes. Understanding, in turn, requires attribution in terms of characterizing and quantifying linkages among system components. IARC’s strategy for synthesizing our understanding and predictive capabilities is to entrain the international Arctic research community into activities that are essential for scientific progress and that are not often amenable to support through conventional funding channels.

To help address some of these Arctic challenges and opportunities, the U.S. Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee (IARPC)­representing 13 Federal agencies, departments, and offices­has crafted the FY 2013-2017 Arctic Research Plan. This plan provides a blueprint for effective Federal coordination of Arctic research for the next half-decade to help maintain a U.S. focus on Arctic stewardship for many years to come. Because the Arctic is geographically remote and environmentally harsh, advancing regional knowledge and understanding requires specialized research platforms, instruments and cyberinfrastructure. The Arctic Collaborative Environment (ACE) tool was identified in this Arctic Research Plan as potentially offering a virtual network cyberinfrastructure capability for use in facilitating online communication, collaboration and scientific discovery among researchers with an emphasis on Web-based visualization, analysis and interpretation of diverse datasets and information.

Additional information on ACE is available at https://ace.arsc.edu/

Additional information on IARC is available at http://www.iarc.uaf.edu/

Additional information on ARSC is available at http://www.arsc.edu/arsc/

Organizers of the 5th International Conference on Polar and Alpine Microbiology (PAM) announce a call for registration and abstracts. The conference will be held 8-12 September 2013 in Big Sky, Montana.

The conference will provide a multi-disciplinary forum for scientists, students, and professionals to discuss aspects of cold-adapted microorganisms and the roles they play in polar and alpine environments, exchange ideas and experiences on an international scale, and explore emerging areas of interest.

The following conference sessions will address topics related to prokaryotes, eukaryotes, viruses, technological developments, and process related research:

• Sub-zero microbiology: links to other ecosystems;
• Microbial first responders to a changing world;
• Thresholds and tipping points in the cryosphere;
• Subglacial microbiology;
• Evolution of psychrophilic microorganisms;
• Biodiversity, ecosystem function, and environmental change: past, present, and future; and
• Earth's icy biosphere as a model for life on extraterrestrial subzero worlds.

PAM 2013 will award several competitive grants to early career scientists from the U.S. based on strength and relevance of abstract submitted. Further details on these grants and the application procedure can be found on the conference website.

Registration deadline: Monday, 24 June 2013.

Abstract submission deadline: Monday, 24 June 2013.

For further information, links to online registration and abstract submission forms, and to download the grant application, please visit the website.