APECS News

The Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS) is currently developing a polar remote sensing resource that will summarize key relevant information about Earth Observation techniques in the polar sciences and improve the accessibility of remote sensing to polar early career researchers (ECRs). To make this resource as useful for the community as possible, we would like to better understand your current needs, expectations, and barriers to polar remote sensing. We thus welcome all early career polar researchers (master students, PhD candidates and professional researchers, both in public and private sectors, up to 8 years after obtaining a PhD) studying the Arctic, Antarctic and/or the Alpine region, to fill out this survey: https://forms.gle/qdPtHacLFzTveZSC7

We all understand the gruelling conditions and the long hours it takes to collect and analyse data, but we very rarely see it. We see the glamorous shots, the final products and plots, but not what it takes to get to that point. APECS South Africa (APECSSA) invites you to submit a photo to showcase #behindthescenesofscience & #howAPECSSAdoscience.

USAPECS is hosting a Becoming a Polar Scientist/Becoming part of the Polar Scientific Community blog series this year! We are looking for US-based scientists and professionals with any polar/alpine/cryosphere connection for this series. Our goal is to gain perspectives from a variety of people involved in polar research in any discipline to help inform the early career community of the current challenges and opportunities in finding a community within the field and ways to get involved in polar research.

The Arctic PASSION EU project starts its Online Seminar and Dialogue Series with a two-part kickoff seminar on science communication during the APECS International Polar Week! Seminar Part I will be on "Storytelling in Science" (22 March) and Part II on "How to produce media in the field" (24 March). Please note that the second seminar is better understandable when you checked out the first one before (see the recording down below). 

Every year on 1 December, the polar community celebrates the day when the Antarctic Treaty was signed in 1959. This treaty designates Antarctica as a space reserved for scientific and peaceful purposes only and creates a space of cooperation between the signatories to the treaty.

The Arctic Research Icebreaker Consortium (ARICE) and the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS) invite for a webinar on “Are we losing a sink for atmospheric trace gases?: Nitrous oxide in the Arctic marine ecosystem” on 28 February 2022 from 13:00 – 14:00 GMT.

Today on 1 February, the APECS Directorate formally made the transition from Germany to Norway.

Postdoctoral researchers from APECS Spain and other APECS NCs, along with ECRs and senior researchers from different countries published a perspective article in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution on how it is to pursue a career in polar research these days

Job insecurity and instability are the main obstacles for polar early and mid-career researchers, while networking and international mobility increase their chances of success.

Young Researchers in Ny-Ålesund, photo by Andrea Popp.

An ISMASS workshop entitled “Ice Sheets: Weather versus Climate” (see description below) is planned for this summer (21 - 27 Aug 2022) in Reykjavik, Iceland. The workshop is organized by the Ice Sheet Mass Balance and Sea Level (ISMASS) group and supported by SCAR/IASC/CliC. The organizing committee (~5 people) is looking for one APECS Representative to join the ISMASS workshop organizing committee from now on until the end of August 2022.