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July 12, 2017


No Arctic science events are scheduled today.
Media   
 
Fulbright Arctic Initiative Accepting Applications The U.S. Department of State has announced the launch of the second Fulbright Arctic Initiative. Scholars and researchers from the eight Arctic Council countries can now apply for this 18-month collaborative research program, which will begin in spring 2018 and run through the fall of 2019. Established researchers, early-career specialists, and indigenous knowledge experts will join together to form a network of scholars to conduct research in one of two focus areas:  Resilient Communities and Sustainable Economies.  Scholars will be selected through an open, merit-based competition to participate in an individual Fulbright exchange and convene with the other scholars for three in-person group seminars and on-going virtual communication to carry out team-based research. For more information, visit the Fulbright Arctic Initiative website or contact us.
 
As Sea Ice Gets Scarcer, Polar Bear Attacks on People Become More Frequent. As Arctic sea ice has dwindled, polar bear attacks on people have increased - correlated trends that point to distressed conditions for bears forced to fend for themselves on land as the ice of their ocean habitat melts. A published analysis by researchers of all confirmed wild polar bear attacks around the Arctic since 1870 shows a steep upturn in attacks in recent years. Twenty percent of the 73 known polar bear attacks on people occurred in just five years, from 2010 to 2014, according to the analysis, and in many cases, the bears killed to eat, not to defend themselves. Alaska Dispatch News
 
NOAA Sailing Drones are Collecting Data From the Arctic to the Tropics. Over the next four months, NOAA scientists will launch unmanned ocean vehicles, called Saildrones, from the Arctic to the tropical Pacific Ocean to help better understand how changes in the ocean are affecting weather, climate, fisheries and marine mammals. The wind and solar-powered research vehicles will travel thousands of miles across the ocean, reaching some areas never before surveyed with such specialized technology. In mid-July, scientists will send off the first unmanned sailing vehicles from Alaska, with two sailing north through the Bering Strait into the Arctic Ocean and another crossing the Bering Sea. Traversing Alaska's inhospitable waters, the remotely-operated vehicles will track melting ice, measure the ocean's levels of carbon dioxide and count fish, seals and whales to better understand their behavior and population. SCUBA News
 
Greenland's Ice Sheet is Full of Toxins Waiting to Break Free-and Microbes that Eat Them. Despite the Arctic's pristine image, pollution still makes its way to our most northerly latitudes. Earlier this year, researchers reported that even our plastic waste is clogging up the Arctic seas. Similarly, persistent organic pollutants including mercury, which are released from coal fired power plants, and polychlorinated biphenyls (better known as PCBs) also end up in the Arctic, where they lurk inside the snow and ice on glaciers. PCBs were once widely used as a flame retardant, but were phased out in the 1980s as research found that they were harmful to human health and take a long time to break down. As the ice sheets melt, they release this trapped pollution back into the larger environment, raising questions about how local ecosystems will handle the influx. Popular Science
 
Resolving a Methane Mystery in the Arctic. Methane (CH4) is a powerful greenhouse gas with the potential to accelerate climate change if emissions substantially increase. Models based on numerous field studies in recent decades estimate large CH4 emissions from wetlands, lakes, and marine shelf environments in the northern permafrost region. The sum of these emission estimates is about 60 teragrams CH4 per year, or ~25% of global natural CH4 emissions. This is substantially larger than the ~25 teragrams CH4 per year emissions estimated for the region from inversion models based on atmospheric CH4 concentration data. Thus, there is a clear need for the scientific community to resolve this discrepancy and better understand the sensitivity of CH4 emissions to ongoing climate change in the northern permafrost region. EOS
 
Warmer Arctic Harms Crops in US, Canada: Study. Exceptionally warm years in the Arctic have provoked extra-cold winters and springs further to the south, decreasing crop yields across central Canada and the United States, researchers said Monday."Our study demonstrates for the first time an apparent linkage between Arctic temperature variations and agricultural productivity in mid-latitudes," they reported in the journal Nature Geoscience.
Overall, global warming during the last half-century has boosted plant growth in temperate and boreal zones. Phys.org
Future Events
     
107th Commission Meeting of the US Arctic Research Commission. July 17, 2017(Washington, DC USA). The U.S. Arctic Research Commission will hold its 107th meeting in Washington, DC, on July 17, 2017. The business sessions, open to the public, will convene at 8:30 am at the Naval Heritage Center, 801 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20004. The focus of this meeting will include reports and updates on programs and research projects affecting Alaska and the greater Arctic.  Meeting agenda now online
 here.

IARPC Collaborations Webinar Series: Outcomes of Arctic Horizons, July 17, 2017, 1:30pm US Eastern TimeThe Arctic Horizons project brought together members of the Arctic social science research and indigenous communities through a series of workshops to reassess the goals, potentials, and needs of these diverse communities and NSF's Arctic Social Sciences Program within the context of a rapidly changing circumpolar North. The Arctic Horizon's Program Manager and Principal Investigators will describe the outcomes of the workshop series, including the soon to be released final synthesis report which will describe the community's vision for the future of Arctic social science research. Go towww.iarpccollaborations.org/webinars
 (new this week)

This biennial symposium, co-hosted by U.S. National/Naval Ice Center (NIC) and the US Arctic Research Commission (USARC) focuses on a broad cross-section of naval and maritime operations and issues in an "ice-free Arctic." The symposium brings together nationally and internationally recognized experts on Arctic marine operations, infrastructure, science, environmental observations, and on a wide range of other topics.

In-person registration is now CLOSED (capacity reached, sorry). To get on the waiting list, in case seats open up, please email John Farrell.

Registration (here) remains open for participation via live 
webcast which will enable participants to ask questions of the speakers using.

The detailed program is available online hereOver 50 confirmed speakers...

Sen. Dan Sullivan
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Sen. Lisa Murkowski
Rep. Don Young

ADM P. Zukunft USCG
Fran Ulmer USARC
Larry Mayer USARC

Sen. Angus King











ADM Thad Allen USCG Ret.
Marie Green USARC















The movie Sea Blind will be shown, during the symposium's lunch break on Tuesday and Wednesday (July 18 and 19), and the filmmaker, Ms. Bernice Notenboom will be on hand for discussion and questions.  


As the Symposium is organized jointly by two leading Research Institutes of Russian Academy of Science - Institute of Water Problems and Melnikov Permafrost Institute, particularly the contributions on following research topics are welcome:
  • Observational evidences of change in coupled permafrost-hydrology system.
  • Present state and future projections of local, regional and pan-Arctic hydrology.
  • Modeling studies representing landscape evolution, dynamics of water storages and permafrost degradation.
  • Impacts of permafrost hydrology changes on local communities.
VII International Conference on Cryopedology, August 21-25, 2017 (Yaktsk, Russia). The conference will be hosted by the Institute for Biological Problems of the Cryolithozone of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SB RAS). Plenary reports will be organized in the hall of the Academy of Sciences of the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic. The official languages of the conference are English and Russian (with translation). All technical facilities (projectors, computers, video sets) will be available during the conference for presentation of papers. Additional information will be available soon. See the Facebook page here.
 
2017 University of the Arctic Rectors' Forum and Conference, August 27-29, 2017 (Aberdeen, Scotland). This conference will also consider how northern scholarship can add to discussions on the North into broader terrains of intellectual engagement. In so doing, it will challenge dominant paradigms of research in both the natural and the social sciences, above all by calling into question the very separation of the world of nature from that of human society which underwrites the distinction between these two branches of scientific inquiry. In its place the conference will seek to forge a new practice of interdisciplinary research, done in collaboration with northern residents and on their terms, which recognizes that every discipline is itself an ongoing conversation, or a way of knowing, rather than a compartment within an overarching, hierarchically organized system of knowledge. Conversations from the North will, then, help to generate a science that is more open-ended, responsive to environmental variation and respectful of the wisdom of inhabitants. 

2017 Arctic Energy Summit, September 18-20, 2017 (Helsinki, Finland). The 2017 Summit will address energy in the Arctic as it relates to:
  • Small and off-grid community energy solutions
  • Oil and gas development
  • Renewable energy
  • Regulation and Financing
  • Transportation and transmission
The AES is a multi-disciplinary event expected to draw several hundred industry officials, scientists, academics, policy makers, energy professionals and community leaders together to collaborate and share leading approaches on Arctic energy issues.

2017 Arctic Circle Assembly, October 13-15, 2017 (Reykjavi­k, Iceland). The annual Arctic Circle Assembly is the largest annual international gathering on the Arctic, attended by more than 2000 participants from 50 countries. The Assembly is held every October at the Harpa Conference Center and Concert Hall and is attended by heads of states and governments, ministers, members of parliaments, officials, experts, scientists, entrepreneurs, business leaders, indigenous representatives, environmentalists, students, activists and others from the growing international community of partners and participants interested in the future of the Arctic. 

Polar Law Symposium 2017 and Rovaniemi Arctic Spirit, November 13-16, 2017 (Rovaniemi, Finland). The purpose of the Polar Law Symposium is to examine, in detail, the implications of the challenges faced by the Polar Regions for international law and policy and to make recommendations on appropriate actions by states, policy makers and other international actors to respond to these emerging and re-emerging challenges. The Rovaniemi Arctic Spirit Conference is integrated with the Polar Law Symposium, which will be organized by the Northern Institute for Environmental and Minority Law at the Arctic Center of the University of Lapland.

ISAR-5 Fifth International Symposium on Arctic Research, January 15-18, 2018 (Tokyo, Japan). The fifth ISAR has been planned at the recommendation of the science steering committee of ISAR-4, which was held in Toyama, Japan in April 2015. The fifth ISAR will be devoted to discussions on environmental changes in the Arctic and their regional and global implications, to seek additional international scientific collaboration in this area by gathering, synthesizing and sharing information related to these changes occurring in the Arctic. Special emphasis will be placed on the fields of the social sciences and humanities, which were not included in the previous ISARs. ISAR-5 will consist of general sessions and special sessions. The general sessions will address the following topics: atmosphere; ocean and sea ice; rivers, lakes, permafrost, and snow cover; ice sheets, glaciers, and ice cores; terrestrial ecosystems; marine ecosystems; geospace; policies and economy; and social and cultural dimensions. Special sessions will be solicited on cross-cutting themes. 

The Effects of Climate Change on the World's Oceans, June 4-8, 2018 (Washington, DC USA). 
The 4th International Symposium will bring together experts from around the world to better understand climate impacts on ocean ecosystems - and how to respond. The event is hosted by a variety of groups including International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), North Pacific Marine Science Organization (PICES), Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (IOC), and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

POLAR 2018, June 15-27, 2018 (Davos, Switzerland). POLAR2018 is a joint event from the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) and the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC). The SCAR meetings, the ASSW and the Open Science Conference will be hosted by the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL under the patronage of the Swiss Committee on Polar and High Altitude Research. The WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF is organizing POLAR2018.

Arctic Biodiversity Congress, October 9-11, 2018 (Rovaniemi, Finland). The second Arctic Biodiversity Congress is hosted by the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF), the biodiversity working group of the Arctic Council, and the Ministry of the Environment, Finland. The second Arctic Biodiversity Congress will build on the success of the first Congress, held in 2014 in Trondheim, Norway, and will bring together scientists, policymakers government officials, Indigenous representatives, Traditional Knowledge holders, industry, non-governmental organizations, and others to promote the conservation and sustainable use of Arctic biodiversity. 

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