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The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) initiative is a multidisciplinary research program designed to answer two critical, interrelated climate questions: How will the unstable West Antarctic ice sheet affect future sea level? How do rapid global climate changes occur?

The registration deadline for this workshop is August 1st; abstracts are due August 25th.

A workshop dedicated to the 10th anniversary of the Kolka Glacier event is being organised in Vladikavkaz, Russia, on September 18-20, 2012, including a visit to the disaster site in Karmadon. This workshop will be part of a larger conference on natural and man-made hazards in mountain areas, which is run under the patronage of the Head of the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania.

Topics include:

• Present status of the Kolka glacier/Genaldon valley and forecast for the future.
• Glacier hazard assessment and mitigation, in the local region and worldwide.
• Techniques for monitoring unstable glaciers and other glacier hazards.
• Socioeconomic aspects of glacial hazards and high mountain risks.
• Other relevant topics are also welcome.
  Working languages are English and Russian. It is planned to provide simultaneous translation.

For more information, please contact:
Prof. Jean Schneider (jean.schneider [at] boku.ac.at)
Dr. Sergey Chernomorets (devdorak [at] gmail.com)

In the past decade, earthquake scientists have discovered a family of unusually slow earthquakes. These slow earthquakes occur in diverse geologic environments. Like ordinary earthquakes, they occur as slip on the same faults that host ordinary earthquakes, but they take a long time to unfold, such that they can be described as "slow."

Their discovery was enabled by deployment of highly sensitive earthquake monitoring networks. Slow earthquakes are slow in a systematic way that leads us to define them as a new earthquake category in much the same way that astronomers categorized
main-sequence and off-main-sequence stars nearly a century ago.

Unlike ordinary earthquakes, which grow explosively in size with increasing duration, slow earthquakes, whether large or small, grow at a constant rate. They occur on the deep extension of large faults - a location that is "strategic" because it adjoins the part of the faults that generate the more familiar, and dangerous, "ordinary" earthquakes. Slow earthquakes have the potential to trigger large earthquakes. For this reason alone they merit intense study.

Their recent discovery also points out that there is much still have to learn about earthquakes, and that earthquake science is still a field where fundamental discoveries can be expected.

Dr. Gregory Beroza, Wayne Loel Professor, Deputy Director of the Southern California Earthquake Center and chair of the Department of Geophysics at Stanford University in California, will present “The Tortoise and the Hare: Slow vs. Fast Earthquakes,” on Monday, September 17, 2012 at 7 p.m. in the Pioneer Park Theatre. The lecture is open to community members of all ages for free.

Beroza’s lecture is sponsored by the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology and Seismological Society of America’s Distinguished Lectures Series. For a decade, the IRIS/SSA lecture series has enabled world-renowned scientists to travel and speak to public audiences about cutting-edge seismological research. This will be the first IRIS/SSA Distinguished Lecture to be hosted in Alaska.

The Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers (SNAME) announce "ICETECH 2012: International Conference and Exhibition on Performance of Ships and Structures in Ice," to be held 17-20 September 2012 in Banff, Alberta, Canada.

We invite you to join this exciting event through technical paper presentation, exhibition, delegate and accompanying person attendance, or sponsorship participation, or all of the above.

The theme of the conference is "Performance of Ships and Structures in Ice" but we are including the hot topics of global warming, geopolitics, and future expectations for the Arctic through participation of relevant organizations and experts. There will be an Exhibition in conjunction with the conference. Sponsors are invited. A social and tour program for accompanying persons will be available.

Preliminary session topics include:

-Icebreaking ships (including Naval Architecture and Marine Operations);
-Structures in ice/iceberg populated waters (including structure design, ice/iceberg-structure interaction, and ice/iceberg mechanics);
-Construction and logistics in ice-covered areas;
-New offshore developments in ice-covered areas;
-Pipelines and facilities;
-Codes, regulations, and standards;
-Ice conditions, forecasting, and remote sensing;
-Safety, risk, and environmental protection;
-Escape, evacuation, and rescue (EER);
-Marine systems for offshore drilling and production operations in ice;
-Evaluation of arctic hazards;
-Global warming implications to the Arctic;
-Arctic geopolitics

For further information, please go to:

http://www.icetech12.org/

The 3rd ICESM will take place from 17 – 21 September 2012 in Hamburg, Germany, with the objective of advancing discourse on Earth system modelling prior to the 5th Assessment Report of the IPCC.

Session titles include:
- Seasonal to decadal climate predictability and prediction
- Changing patterns: Shifting climate regimes and their extremes
- Clouds, convection and the global energy balance
- Carbon and beyond: Coupled biogeochemical cycles in the Earth System
- Cryospheric processes and changes
- Stratospheric and solar influences on surface climate
- Lessons from the past: Using and interpreting the paleo-record
- Imagining the future: Integrated assessment modelling and impacts

Deadline for early registration: 31 July.

IWIC is a series of workshops devoted entirely to ice cave research. After meetings in Romania, Slovak Republic, Russia, and Austria, Italy now hosts this unique workshop. We offer a place to examine the state-of-the-art, discuss ongoing research efforts, and boost international cooperation. We will explore interest for future research projects and define a general strategy for ice cave studies and management.

IWIC-V is an ideal opportunity to widen communication among interested researchers and highlight important research results. IWIC-V is organized under the auspices of the Glacier, Firn, and Ice Caves Commission of the International Union of Speleology, and the Italian Glaciological Committee.

We welcome contributions related to any aspect of ice cave research, and particularly:

• Ice cave climatology and the relationship between hypogean and epigean environments
• Morphology and mass balance of cave ice deposits
• Stratigraphy and internal structure of cave ice deposits
• Ice sampling methods
• Cave ice crystal fabric
• Chemical and isotopic studies of cave ice and its fluid inclusions
• Applications of radiometric methods
• Palynology, dendrochronology and other biology-related studies applied to ice cave research.

For more information, please visit:
http://users.unimi.it/icecaves/IWIC-V/index.html

The International Snow Science Workshop will be held September 16-21, 2012 at the Dena’ina Center in Anchorage, Alaska. The setting for this year’s symposium is the urban environment of Alaska’s largest city surrounded by several mountain ranges within view of the conference center including: the Chugach Mountains, Alaska Range, and the volcanic Aleutian Range. We cordially invite you to join this biennial meeting of snow scientists and avalanche practitioners to continue striving toward the ISSW motto of, “The Merging of Theory and Practice.” Traditionally, ISSW has provided the avalanche industry a forum to: discuss theories, explore innovative concepts, and maintain the state-of-the-art practice in the field of avalanche work.

The boundless climate zones ranging from the temperate coastal rainforest in the southeast region to the frozen arctic environment in the northern region make Alaskan avalanche issues complex in the numerous mountain ranges that rise directly from sea level along the coast to elevations as high as 20,320 feet (6,194 meters) in Alaska’s interior. ISSW 2012 sincerely welcomes avalanche professionals from around the world to visit our unique aspect of mountain culture only found in Alaska. Although most of this 5 day event will be located inside, all ISSW participants will have the opportunity to leave the lecture halls for a field day to go explore a small portion of Alaska’s spectacular mountain scenery and learn about a few of Alaska’s avalanche programs.

The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill (EVOS) Trustee Council will meet on Friday, 14 September 2012 from 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. AKST at the Glenn Olds Hall, 4210 University Drive in Anchorage, Alaska.

Meeting materials, including a tentative agenda, are available at: http://www.evostc.state.ak.us/Events/index.cfm. The meeting is open to the public. You may participate in person or by phone at 1-800-315-6338, conference code 8205.

The event is intended for the UK-based science community engaged in any natural science discipline applied to studies of Antarctica, especially in an Earth system science context. With keynote speakers, presentations on behalf of leading projects, and opportunities to build new networks, the purpose of the meeting is also to provide the community with a forum to discuss future directions of Antarctic science funded in the UK, together with logistic capability needs.

This international conference is organized under the general theme “Moving plates and melting icecaps - Processes and forcing factors in geology” to celebrate the centenary of the first paper on the concept of moving continents published by Alfred Wegener (Wegener 1912) who died at the age of 50 during an expedition in Greenland.

Two sessions of particular interest for the glaciological community are centered around the contribution of Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets to past and future sea-level change:

Session 1. Antarctica's contribution to past and future sea-level change.

Session 2. Greenland's contribution to past and future sea-level change.