Polar and Alpine Community News

The goals of the Ocean Best Practices System Workshop VI, held online, are to guide the development of best practices and operating practices, to promote their documentation, and to share them widely using the Ocean Best Practices System (OBPS). The workshop will consist of plenaries and working groups. For the Plenaries there will be two general themes:

1) Guiding technology evolution and use, and
2) Capacity development/sharing, with an emphasis on developing countries.

On May 27 from 12:00-14:00, the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC), Greenpeace Germany, UNLESS, Deutsche Umwelthilfe, Pew Bertarelli Ocean Legacy, Fridays for Future Deutschland, Scientists For Future, and AWI's for Future - will come together at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin to stand up for Antarctic conservation while country delegates gather for the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (23 May - 2 June).

Interested in learning more about ice cores? Involved in outreach activities about ice core sciences?

Check out these new infographics on ice core sciences, made within the EU project DEEPICE, by Cirenia Sketches. A great introduction to ice core science for non-expert audiences.

Studying paleoclimates is key to better understand climate mechanisms and better predict future climate changes. Ice cores is one the natural archive scientists can analysis to reconstruct past climates.

The Antarctic geological Boundary Conditions (ABC) component of the SCAR-INSTANT programme is (finally) ‘launching’ by having an online meeting to discuss community priorities around understanding Antarctic boundary conditions (e.g. geology, geomorphology, bed etc.) and their links with the overlying modern and past ice sheet (see registration link below for info on areas for discussion).

We have planned a 1.5-2 hour online meeting (repeated twice to enable those in different time zones to contribute at less antisocial times) in which we will outline ABC and then have a series of discussions around possible work packages. Here, we are hopeful that the community will come together and tell us what they either are doing, or what they want to do, and in doing so, we hope to populate some workpackages with scientists of all career stages. There is no need to prepare before the meeting – just turn up (see below) and get involved even if you have never been involved in SCAR activities before.

The Working Group on Integrated Assessment for the Norwegian Sea (WGINOR) at the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) is inviting for new membership.

WGINOR aims to conduct and further develop Integrated Ecosystem Assessments for the Norwegian Sea as a step towards implementing the ecosystem approach.
For this purpose, WGINOR:

• performs integrated assessment of the pelagic ecosystem in the Norwegian Sea and develops a framework for identifying important signals for management,
• utilises multi-species and ecosystem models to evaluate effects of single and multi-species harvest control rules on fishing yield and ecosystem state of the pelagic ecosystem in the Norwegian Sea
• develops forecast products (1-5 years) for ocean climate and for other ecosystem components in the Norwegian Sea
• maintains a two-way dialogue with relevant stakeholders and managers in Norway, Faroe Island, and Iceland
• regularly updates the ICES Norwegian Sea ecosystem overview

Each year in the spring, the Ice Drilling Program (IDP) works with its Science Advisory Board and the research community to update the Long Range Science Plan. This Plan identifies the science in the coming decade that will require the use of ice drilling technology and expertise for the community. This also drives the formation of other plans, for example, the Long Range Drilling Technology Plan. The plans provide the basis for multi‐annual planning for the actions and drill development projects of IDP and others, and the plans give the funding agencies advance notice of upcoming community science needs.

Polar Impact, a network for racial and ethnic minorities in polar research, are thrilled to announce applications for the inaugural Mentorship Initiative are now open!

The Arctic Challenge for Sustainability II (ArCS II) invites applications for their International Early Career Researchers Program.

This program invites a wide range of early career researchers from the Arctic and non-Arctic countries who are engaged in Arctic research, and supports their research by employing or accepting them at universities and research institutions in Japan. This project aims to revitalize mutual exchange between Arctic researchers in Japan and early career researchers overseas and to strengthen the cooperative system for international joint research.

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically shown that global challenges require global responses, which most often seem impossible to agree upon given our world’s heterogeneities and the significant discrepancies in the understanding of human values that once more, the tragic war in Ukraine revealed. Also in pandemic times and in times of war, however, climate change remains the biggest global challenge that humanity is facing and urban development is an important lever of climate change albeit most often not considered a priority area.

The German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE), in partnership with Ecologic Institute and the Maria-Curie Sklodowska University, is organising an interdisciplinary hybrid expert workshop online and in Bonn on 25.05.2022. The workshop is dedicated to bring experts from Arctic and non-Arctic research projects together.