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No Arctic-science event is scheduled for today.
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( American Meteorological Society, August 2020). State of the Climate in 2019. This is the 30th issuance of the annual assessment now known as State of the Climate, published in the Bulletin since 1996. As a supplement to the Bulletin, its foremost function is to document the status and trajectory of many components of the climate system. However, as a series, the report also documents the status and trajectory of our capacity and commitment to observe the climate system.
( Nature Climate Change, July 2020). Past Perspectives on the Present Era of Abrupt Arctic Climate Change. Abrupt climate change is a striking feature of many climate records, particularly the warming events in Greenland ice cores. These abrupt and high-amplitude events were tightly coupled to rapid sea-ice retreat in the North Atlantic and Nordic Seas, and observational evidence shows they had global repercussions. In the present-day Arctic, sea-ice loss is also key to ongoing warming. This Perspective uses observations and climate models to place contemporary Arctic change into the context of past abrupt Greenland warmings. We find that warming rates similar to or higher than modern trends have only occurred during past abrupt glacial episodes. We argue that the Arctic is currently experiencing an abrupt climate change event, and that climate models underestimate this ongoing warming. In recent decades, the Arctic has warmed at over twice the global rate. This Perspective places these trends into the context of abrupt Dansgaard-Oeschger warming events in the palaeoclimate record, arguing that the contemporary Arctic is undergoing comparably abrupt climate change.
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Media
Arctic Warming Leads to Break Up of Canada's 4,000-Year-Old Milne Ice Shelf. The Milne Ice Shelf on the northwest coast of Nunavut's Ellesmere Island has broken up, reducing in size by almost half and setting large ice islands adrift in the Arctic Ocean. Adrienne White, PhD, an ice analyst at the Canadian Ice Service, Environment and Climate Change Canada who has worked on the Milne Ice Shelf in the past, discovered the event. Ice shelves are thick floating ice masses attached to the coast. In the Canadian Arctic, ice shelves were primarily formed through the accumulation of sea ice over centuries. The initial break of the 4,000-year-old Milne Ice Shelf took place between July 30 and 31 and reduced the ice shelf area by 43 percent, from 187 square kilometers to 106 square kilometers. Manitoulin Expositor
 We Mapped the World's Frozen Peatlands. What We Found Was Very Worrying. Peatlands cover just a few percent of the global land area but they store almost one-quarter of all soil carbon and so play a crucial role in regulating the climate. My colleagues and I have just produced the most accurate map yet of the world's peatlands - their depth, and how much greenhouse gas they have stored. We found that global warming will soon mean that these peatlands start emitting more carbon than they store. Peatlands form in areas where waterlogged conditions slow down the decomposition of plant material and peat accumulates. This accumulation of carbon-rich plant remains has been especially strong in northern tundra and taiga areas where they have helped cool the global climate for more than 10,000 years. Now, large areas of perennially frozen (permafrost) peatlands are thawing, causing them to rapidly release the freeze-locked carbon back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and methane. Arctic Today
Global Warming: Electric Fans Sell Out in Arctic Town. Temperatures across the Arctic have been rising at a rate about twice the global average, causing a record heat wave in Siberia. DW's Emily Sherwin visits a Siberian town whose very foundations are threatened by rising global temperatures. DW News
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Future Events
Arctic Science Summit Week, March 20-26, 2021 (Lisbon, Portugal). The Portuguese Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education, the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and the Local Organizing Committee will host the Arctic Science Summit Week 2021. The Conference is organized by FCT, Ciência Viva, AIR Center, the Portuguese Arctic Community and by IASC and partners. Framed by the overarching theme for the Science Conference "The Arctic: Regional Changes, Global Impacts," Lisbon invites International experts on the Arctic and Indigenous Peoples to discuss the "New Arctic" and also its impacts and interactions to and with the lower latitudes.
Save the Date: 2nd Symposium on Polar Microbes and Viruses, May 3-6, 2021 (Hanko, Finland). Organizers announce, that due to the coronavirus outbreak, the 2nd Symposium on Polar Microbes and Viruses has been postponed to 2021. 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.
3rd Arctic Science Ministerial, May 8-9, 2021 (Toyko, Japan). The Japanese and Icelandic organizers of this ministerial continue to plan for an in-person ministerial, in Tokyo, but have moved the dates from November 21-22, 2020 to May 8-9, 2021 because of Covid-19. Since the last Arctic Science Ministerial in 2018, changes in the Arctic ecosystem and the resulting impacts locally and globally have been severely felt. Considering the need for climate change mitigation, adaptation, and repair measures, the relevance of an international Arctic Science Ministerial has never been greater. It is necessary to strengthen scientific cooperation and collaboration among both Arctic and non-Arctic States in order to develop our understanding of the rapid changes impacting the Arctic. The First Arctic Science Ministerial (ASM1) was hosted by the United States in 2016, and two years later, the Second Arctic Science Ministerial (ASM2) was co-hosted by Germany, Finland, and the European Commission. ASM3 will be co-hosted by Iceland and Japan.
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