Polar and Alpine Community News

Simon Cook (U Dundee,This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), Holger Frey (U Zurich,This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), Adam Emmer (Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic,emmer.a@czechglobe.cz) and Dan Shugar (U Calgary,This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) invite your contributions to a Special Issue in Frontiers focused on high mountain geohazards and risks. We are looking for contributions spanning a variety of locations, methods (e.g. modelling, remote sensing, field studies), and disciplines (physical and social sciences, etc). Full details are availablehere, with the following deadlines: Abstracts (Sept 1, 2020), full manuscripts (January 15, 2021). We encourage you to get in touch with any one of us to discuss your ideas, if you are unsure of fit.

ESA have developed a plan to manouevre CryoSat-2 into a new orbit that is synchronized with ICESat-2. The campaign is tentatively known as Cryo2Ice. Although the Cryo2Ice campaign has been planned for some time, the implementation was paused due to COVID-19. However, there is a favourable opportunity to begin this manouevre on 16^th July which would achieve the new orbit by early August, in plenty of time for the Arctic sea ice season.

T-MOSAiC and their collaborators are pleased to inform you that they will edit a special journal issue on Arctic Terrestrial Pollution, including Coastal Areas. This special issue is pre-accepted to be published in Environmental Pollution (IF= 5.714) and the chief guest-editors will be João Canário from the University of Lisbon (Portugal) and Maribeth Murray from the University of Calgary (Canada). Expression of interest is now open until July 15. Interested authors should send an email to the T-MOSAiC secretariat (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) with a tentative title and the name, affiliation, and email of the lead author.

The Caleb Lumen Pungowiyi Scholars Program announces a call for applications for the 2020 Fall semester. The Caleb Scholars Program is available to students from Norton Sound, Northwest Arctic, and Arctic Slope regions and applicants must be pursuing an undergraduate or graduate degree in disciplines related to marine conservation. Application deadline is 31 July 2020.

A new bonus episode of The IcePod is now available. The IcePod is the podcast about polar science and the people. Hosts talk to scientists who went on board Polarstern, the German research icebreaker, for the biggest research expedition in the Arctic. It is produced in collaboration with the Alfred Wegener Institute and Radio Weser.TV. The IcePod is the official podcast of the Year of Polar Prediction. In this episode, hosts talk with the meteorology professor Gunilla Svensson about the Year of Polar Prediction (YOPP) Targeted Observing Periods, the process-based model evaluation project YOPPSiteMIP and why MOSAiC is a paradise for every Arctic scientist.

The National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs (OPP) has released their plans for the upcoming USAP Antarctic season. Find out more details here.

Nominations for the 2020 International Glaciological Society Awards close in just over a month. Details of these awards, their eligibility and the requirements of the nomination packages are available at here. Members of the Awards Committee are listed here.
Please note that the award system was revamped in 2018 and some awards have changed in scope and content. It is the intention of IGS to give these awards on roughly an annual basis. Nominations can be made at any time, but the close off date for the 2020 awards is Friday 17 July 2020.

Our Special Issue on "Dynamic Disturbance Processes in Permafrost Regions" in the open-access journal Remote Sensing strives to bring together research on how disturbances shape and restructure permafrost ecosystems. We welcome submissions on the application of remote sensing to a broad range of disturbances, including thermokarst and thermoerosion, thermokarst lake dynamics, wildfire-ecosystem interactions, and anthropogenic disturbances. We particularly encourage manuscripts linking interacting components that influence periglacial ecosystem dynamics (e.g., wildfire and vegetation; thermokarst and hydrology; climate and thermokarst).

Almost one hundred excellent photographers from the INTERACT Community participated in the INTERACT Photo Competition. We received almost 800 pictures for the nine different categories; Arctic Fieldwork, Climate Change, Glaciers, Landscapes, Local Communities, People, Remote Field Camps, The Research Station, Wildlife and Plants. The pictures have been evaluated by an international evaluation committee, and we are now able to announce the results of the competition. The INTERACT Photo Competition has been made with the main purpose of collecting pictures for a coffee table book about arctic research. View the three best pictures in each category here. The INTERACT secretariat is working on the book with a planned publication late in September 2020. We are however happy to have so many excellent photographers in the INTERACT Community, and we look forward to show you many more pictures in the INTERACT Coffee Table Book.

Reporting to the International Arctic Science Committee on the activities of a large and diverse community is a problem that we have also identified in the UK. To facilitate communication, we encourage Arctic cryosphere researchers in the UK to subscribe to the mailing list of the NERC Arctic Office – scroll to the bottom of https://www.arctic.ac.uk/ to register. (Richard Essery)