Extremely low winter temperatures in the atmosphere over the arctic are becoming more frequent and more extreme because of climate patterns associated with global warming, a study published Wednesday by Nature Communications found. In addition, the extremely low temperatures are causing reactions among chemicals humans pumped into the air decades ago, leading to further reductions in the ozone layer of the Earth's atmosphere.

The Arctic coastal states of Canada, Denmark (Greenland), Norway, Russia, and the USA as well as the remote fisheries actors Iceland, the EU, Japan, South Korea and, finally, China, have ratified the International Agreement to Prevent Unregulated Fishing in the High Seas of the Central Arctic Ocean.

The strategy has been prepared alongside Prime Minister Sanna Marin’s Government Program and covers the coming two parliamentary terms until 2030, writes Nina Brander,  Secretary-General of the Arctic Advisory Board with Prime Minister Sanna Marin, in this post for the think-tank Polar Research and Policy Initiative.

Rapid climate warming is altering Arctic and alpine tundra ecosystem structure and function, including shifts in plant phenology. While the advancement of green up and flowering are well-documented, it remains unclear whether all phenophases, particularly those later in the season, will shift in unison or respond divergently to warming. Here, we present the largest synthesis to our knowledge of experimental warming effects on tundra plant phenology from the International Tundra Experiment. We examine the effect of warming on a suite of season-wide plant phenophases. Results challenge the expectation that all phenophases will advance in unison to warming.

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.