You may recall that a few months ago, a large container vessel got stuck in the Suez Canal. This spurred a lot of international attention, both from the standpoint of the inherent humor of the situation and from the standpoint of its contribution to the existing struggles of the global shipping system. The Russian government, though, saw an opportunity. “The incident in the Suez Canal should make everyone think about diversifying strategic sea routes amid the increasing scope of sea shipping,” Russia’s envoy for international cooperation in the Arctic, Nikolai Korchunov, said at the time.

Researchers have recently found that several long-lasting human-made contaminants have been building up in Arctic lakes, polar bears, ringed seals, and other wildlife. These contaminants belong to a family of chemicals called polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), and are used in food packaging, waterproof clothing and firefighting foams. The true number of PFAS that exist is hard to pin down, but estimates suggest there are more than 4,700 types, as industry continues to make new ones.

Earth’s declining Arctic ice is without doubt one of the biggest casualties of climate change, the consequences of which are far reaching, from the plight of the iconic polar bear and other wildlife, to impacts to weather and climate systems that will be felt across the globe. The continuing loss of the world’s ice is frequently in the news and now research based on ice-thickness data from ESA’s CryoSat and Envisat missions along with a new model of snow has revealed that sea ice in the coastal regions of the Arctic may be thinning twice as fast as thought.

The European Union will provide 15 million euros from the Horizon 2020 Programme to fund the Arctic PASSION project for the period 2021 to 2025. Under the leadership of the Alfred Wegener Institute, a consortium of 35 partners will promote the integration of international environmental observing systems for the Arctic and improve the tailoring of these systems to the needs of various user groups ranging from local inhabitants to academia through to industry and decision-makers.

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.