The WCRP (World Climate Research Program) set forth a series of grand challenges to address highly specific and highly focused topics that are critical to improving our progress in understanding the climate system. One of these challenges was the “Cryosphere in a Changing Climate”. To move the discussion of this concept forward, a workshop was held in Tromsø, Norway on 16-18 October 2013. The Climate and the Cryosphere Program (CliC), through APECS, provided support for a few early career scientists to participate in this workshop.
As one of these ECR participants, I assisted in managing the webcast as well as sharing workshop content on Twitter. I participated in the glaciology breakout sessions, shared two posters of my research work, and created a Frostbyte (vimeo.com/allenpope/landsat8). My participation in both sharing my work as well as helping with a minor part of the online sharing of the meeting gave me the opportunity to develop many helpful skills.
Additionally, I benefitted from the networking opportunities that the workshop provided. I connected with new colleagues with whom I might work in the future both scientifically and organizationally, re-connected with senior colleagues within glaciology, and benefitted from conversations with other early career researchers from around the world. Much of the group discussions benefitted from a collegial and a collaborative atmosphere, and the workshop was an interesting opportunity to observe and learn from where it very clearly worked.
I am very much looking forward to participating in some of the action points suggested by the workshop. A workshop report as well as recorded talks from the workshop will be available shortly on climate-cryosphere.org. Be sure to watch out for future opportunities available from APECS and CliC. Thanks again to WCRP, CliC, and APECS for making this opportunity happen for me.
Allen Pope
about.me/allenpope
Photo courtesy of Rob Massom
