News Archive

ARCUS' Arctic Calendar is an online, searchable calendar of major meetings and events relevant to the Arctic science, education, and policy communities. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many events have made postponements, cancellations, or have moved online. The calendar is updated daily to reflect these ongoing changes. We encourage anyone organizing an event to submit it for inclusion on the calendar. We also welcome other Arctic organizations to link to the Arctic Calendar. Events can be submitted through this online form or by emailing calendar [at] arcus.org

The December 2020 issue of Witness Community Highlights is now available online. This issue includes the article “NSF's Navigating the New Arctic Program: Projects Funded in 2020.” Navigating the New Arctic (NNA), one of NSF's 10 Big Ideas, has supported fundamental convergence research across the social, natural, environmental, engineering, and computing and information sciences since 2017. A wide range of topics and regions are represented in the 21 Arctic research projects that were funded in 2020. This article includes a list of the 2020-funded NNA projects, with brief descriptions.

This issue includes updates from NSF’s Arctic Sciences Section; news of DOE’s reestablished Arctic Energy Office; an update on IARPC collaboration team activities; summary of a National Academies workshop report on global health and security risks associated with climate change; a report from the Polar Technology Community; information on a new service from the Arctic Data Center; an article about understanding two kinds of public knowledge of the polar regions; an article from a citizen science project investigating the dynamics of seasonal winter berry loss; news of the Toolik Field Station operations during COVID-19; updates from the Sea Ice Prediction Network–Phase 2 project; a summary of ARCUS member research updates; comments from the ARCUS Executive Director and the Board President; and a highlight of ARCUS member institution Cold Climate Housing Research Center and National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

The Arctic Research Consortium of the U.S. (ARCUS) announces the availability of a new hub of webpages featuring information about each of Arctic research projects that have been supported through the National Science Foundation’s Navigating the New Arctic (NNA) program. Explore the site to learn more about NNA project activities, team members, and field site locations. The site also includes information about the newest round of 2020 NNA grantees.

The Arctic Research Consortium of the U.S. (ARCUS) announces our ARCUS at AGU and the Arctic Sessions webpages for this year’s virtual American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting. The Fall Meeting will be held online 1-17 December 2020. ARCUS has compiled a list of Arctic-relevant happenings to help attendees of the virtual AGU Fall Meeting 2020 find Arctic-related town halls, talks, posters, and other events. The complete list, which includes the day/time, session title, and type of event, is available on the Arctic Sessions webpage.

The 2020 Sea Ice Outlook Interim Post-Season Report is now available. The September monthly averaged sea ice extent at the end of the 2020 summer melt season was 3.92 million square kilometers. This is the second lowest in the satellite record that began in 1979.

This interim report is intended as a quick postseason update that summarizes how the outlooks did in comparison to the observed September monthly mean extent. A full post-season report, to be published in February 2021, will include an in-depth analysis of factors impacting sea ice this past summer, further discussion about the outlooks, comments on regional observation, predicted spatial fields, Antarctic contributions, and a summary from the Sea Ice Drift Forecast Experiment (SIDFEx).

The meeting report from the 2020 Polar Technology Conference, held 10–12 March in Boulder, Colorado, is now available. The goal of the meeting was to link experts in polar science and technology development to discuss current technological resources for polar research and identify barriers to research and application of technology for problems unique to polar regions.

ARCUS invites registration for the next Arctic Research Seminar. This seminar, titled Bridging Arts and Science, will take place Monday, 21 September 2020 at 8:00 a.m. AKDT (9:00 a.m. PDT, 10:00 a.m. MDT, 11:00 a.m. CDT, 12:00 p.m. EDT).

The seminar will be presented by Matthew Burtner (University of Virginia), Leena Cho (University of Virginia), and Gabrielle Russomagno (School of Visual Arts). During this webinar presenters will discuss how their work spans science and the arts through media such as music, landscape architecture, and the visual arts.