American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) Inside Diplomacy: Arctic Diplomacy

The warming of the Arctic region is opening a host of new diplomatic challenges and opportunities. What does this mean for U.S. diplomacy and for our Foreign Service? This latest event in AFSA's Inside Diplomacy series will feature guest James DeHart, U.S. Coordinator for the Arctic Region, for a discussion about the increased need for U.S. diplomacy and leadership in a region that is seeing significant climate and geopolitical changes. Hosted by AFSA President Ambassador Rubin.

“Zombie wildfires” — fires that smolder underground through the winter and flare up the following spring — appear to be increasing due to climate change, according to a recent study, APM reports. The study published in the journal Nature was led by researchers at a university in Amsterdam, aided by University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists. The study points to more than 40 overwintering wildfires reported in Alaska since 2005.

New research shows that concentrations of the toxic element mercury in rivers and fjords connected to the Greenland Ice Sheet are comparable to rivers in industrial China, an unexpected finding that is raising questions about the effects of glacial melting in an area that is a major exporter of seafood.

New research shows that concentrations of the toxic element mercury in rivers and fjords connected to the Greenland Ice Sheet are comparable to rivers in industrial China, an unexpected finding that is raising questions about the effects of glacial melting in an area that is a major exporter of seafood. 

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.

IARPC has released a draft of the next five-year Arctic Research Plan, which will span from 2022-2026. We are now asking the public to comment on the draft plan by June 11, 2021. To provide additional information about the draft plan contents and development, the Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee is hosting a series of one-hour information sessions.

Join IARPC on Thursday, June 3 at 9am AKT / 1pm ET for a webinar with Dr. Sarah Aarons, Assistant Professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Aarons will provide a brief introduction to the historical context of colonialism in the Arctic, focused on Alaska, and its relationship to climate change impacts on Arctic Indigenous Peoples. For researchers working in the Arctic, this webinar will provide insight into the ways that relationships, resource extraction, compensation, and infrastructure building have been predominantly one-sided, and how climate change is now impacting Indigenous communities.

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.