DHS S&T's Centers of Excellence (COE) Summit is set and focused on Homeland Security Challenges: Evolving Threats & Dynamic Solutions. This event is a special opportunity for COE researchers to connect and network with DHS components, federal, state, and local stakeholders, as well as industry partners to present current and emerging solutions to threats and challenges faced by DHS. Attendees can visit the Innovation Showcase, where COE and vendor partners showcase research breakthroughs, new products and tools to assist operational decision-makers and dynamic solutions to secure our Homeland.

The purpose of the One Health Zoonotic Disease Prioritization workshop for Alaska was to prioritize zoonotic diseases of greatest concern for Alaska using a multisectoral, One Health approach with input from representatives from Indigenous, public, animal (livestock and wildlife), and environmental health sectors and other relevant partners. This workshop was the first One Health Zoonotic Disease Prioritization Workshop conducted for a single state in the United States and the first in the Arctic region. The specific workshop goal was to use a multisectoral, One Health approach to prioritize endemic and emerging zoonotic diseases of greatest concern in Alaska to be jointly addressed by sectors responsible for human, animal, and environmental health.

The first high-level meeting between U.S. and Russian officials since President Joe Biden assumed office in January will take place this week, as diplomats discuss the controversial political fure of the Arctic. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is set to meet with his American counterpart, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, on the sidelines of the Arctic Council ministerial meeting in the Icelandic capital Reykjavik this week.

Blinken made the warning ahead of a planned meeting with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov. "We've seen Russia advance unlawful maritime claims, particularly its regulation of foreign vessels transiting the Northern Sea Route, which are inconsistent with international law," Blinken said at a briefing with Iceland's foreign minister in Reykjavik Tuesday.

Iceland’s Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir met with U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on Tuesday for a bilateral meeting ahead of the Arctic Council ministerial on May 20. The meeting was dominated by environmental issues, the Icelandic government said in a statement. “[Jakobsdottir and Blinken] discussed the pandemic and the importance of the recovery from it being green and sustainable,” the news release said.

The oral histories of nomadic Indigenous Peoples in Siberia are helping to unlock the full impact of climate change on Arctic Russia, says a paper published this spring in the journal Arctic. “The headlines coming out of the Russian Arctic are often tackling militarization or environmental pollution or how Putin is doing this or that,” Tero Mustonen, a Finnish geographer and one of the paper’s authors, told Eye on the Arctic. “But we don’t often hear how environmental change is affecting Indigenous Siberian peoples and nomadic life in the Arctic and that is just as important.”

The Biden administration has reinstalled the director of the federal climate program that produces the U.S. government’s definitive reports on climate change, after the Trump administration removed him in November. Michael Kuperberg, the climate scientist who ran the program for six years during Democratic and Republican administrations, was reinstated Monday, the White House confirmed. As the executive director of the U.S. Global Change Research Program, Kuperberg coordinates climate change research across 13 federal agencies and production of the program’s National Climate Assessment, the nation’s most important report on climate change science and its consequences.

Twenty years ago, the Arctic was more resilient than now as sea ice was three times thicker than today and provided a buffer against the influence of short-term climate fluctuations. The recent decade has seen an increase in Arctic extreme events in climate and ecosystems including events beyond previous records. Such new extremes include Greenland ice mass loss, sea ice as thin and more mobile, coastal erosion, springtime snow loss, permafrost thaw, wildfires, and bottom-to-top ecosystem reorganizations. While their numbers increase, the distribution of the type, location, and timing of extreme events are less predictable. 

The Arctic Council hosts its Ministerial Meeting in Reykjavik. The event will be lived-streamed.

This event is hosted by Migration in Harmony Research Coordination Network. In 2021, a coalition of organizations including The Arctic Institute, Women in Polar Sciences, and Women of the Arctic are organizing a webinar series, Breaking the Ice Ceiling, that aims to illuminate polar research and achievements (past and present) by those who identify as women and to foster discussion on systemic change in polar sciences (Indigenous, natural, and social sciences) to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion. In this webinar, you will learn from Director Romani Makkik and Producer Dr. Shari Fox about strengths-based research and transforming the research process through critical reflection and new expression.

ADAC will conduct the Center's Program Year 7 Annual meeting to focus on U.S. Coast Guard Project Champions, key stakeholders and the community of Arctic science and technology researchers. Included in the Program Year 7 Annual meeting are planned guest speakers from HQ U.S. Coast Guard, DHS S&T and senior Arctic Research leadership in Washington D.C.

For the first time, a Regional Conference on Permafrost will be combined with the bi-annual 19th International Conference on Cold Regions Engineering. This conference is hosted by the US Permafrost Association, the American Society of Civil Engineers, the International Permafrost Association, the Permafrost Young Researchers Network, and the University of Colorado Boulder. A complete list of planned sessions is available here.

Organizers announce, that due to the coronavirus outbreak, the 2nd Symposium on Polar Microbes and Viruses has been postponed to 2022. This symposium will bring together molecular microbial ecologists specializing in different organism groups to share our latest results and discuss methodological problems, as well as future prospects in the field, including practical international collaborations. The environmental focus will be on cryospheric environments including sea ice, glaciers, ice sheets, and permafrost, but excellent research in other polar environments is also invited. The methods to be discussed will focus on 'omics' techniques, ranging from single cells to metagenomes, but research using additional methods is encouraged as well.