A U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker embarked Wednesday on a long Arctic mission that includes a rare transit of the Northwest Passage, conducting scientific research and a joint exercise with Canada in Arctic waters. The cutter Healy, one of two operational U.S. Coast Guard icebreakers, departed Wednesday from Seward, Alaska, for the three-week journey to Nuuk, Greenland.

Arctic researchers from Denmark say they have accidentally discovered what they believe is the world’s northernmost island located off Greenland's coast. The scientists from the University of Copenhagen initially thought they had arrived at Oodaaq, an island discovered by a Danish survey team in 1978, to collect samples during an expedition that was conducted in July.

Climate change may increase the risk of viruses becoming capable of infecting new hosts in the Arctic, suggests a study of genetic material from a Canadian lake. Canadian scientists found that an increase in glacier melt at Lake Hazen, the Arctic’s largest lake by volume and a location in George Clooney’s film The Midnight Sky, was linked to a greater risk of viral spillover, where a virus infects a new host for the first time. Melting glaciers were considered a proxy of climate change, which is causing their retreat globally.

Current Arctic sea ice cover is at its lowest levels since before 1850 and is likely to reach practically ice-free conditions at its summer minimum at least once before 2050, according to a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC for short. The report, released earlier this month, is almost 4,000 pages in length, and paints a grim future for a world where climate change is “widespread, rapid and intensifying,” and in some cases, irreversible. Scientists who compiled the report explored different scenarios over the next several decades, including how sea ice cover might change if the United States significantly changes its practices regarding carbon emissions, or if it stays the course.

Got an idea for a project that could make a positive impact in the North? Letters of intent for the next Arctic Inspiration Prize (AIP) are being accepted until Sept. 7. Up for grabs is a $1 million prize, up to four prizes for up to $500,000 each and up to seven youth prizes of up to $100,000 each.

Alaska Chadux̂ Network and the North American Marine Environment Protection Association are co-sponsoring a free collaborative virtual seminar that will focus on maritime challenges currently being faced in the U.S. Arctic. The 3-hour informative event will address a series of topics including a keynote address focusing on the role of the U.S. Arctic in national policies; current issues being confronted by stakeholders in the region; and future challenges. This unique event will bring together expert insight from across the maritime sector, arctic specialists, and government officials. Registration is now open.

In this talk, Prof. Andrew Stuhl will examine the state of knowledge that Pimlott experienced as a constitutive element of energy frontiers, environmental regimes, and struggles for Indigenous rights in the late twentieth-century Arctic. This event is part of the Arctic Environmental Humanities Workshop Series and is hosted by The Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies and the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge.

The annual Arctic Circle Assembly is the largest annual international gathering on the Arctic, attended by more than 2000 participants from 60 countries. It is attended by heads of states and governments, ministers, members of parliaments, officials, experts, scientists, entrepreneurs, business leaders, indigenous representatives, environmentalists, students, activists and others from the growing international community of partners and participants interested in the future of the Arctic.

For the most up-to-date COVID information, please see the the US Embassy in Reykjavik's COVID page: here.

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.

The Maritime Risk Symposium is an annual three-day conference in which government and maritime industry leaders, port representatives, researchers, and solution providers convene to examine current and emerging threats to maritime security. Government agencies, commercial entities, institutions of research, and higher education come together to discuss various threats, challenges, and risks to international and domestic maritime sectors.

The European Commission and the European External Action Service will organize a high-level EU Arctic Forum and the Annual Arctic Indigenous Peoples’ Dialogue. The EU Arctic Forum will bring together key Arctic players and stakeholders to assess recent developments in the region and discuss challenges ahead. The event will provide a strategic outlook for the updated EU Arctic policy and delve into topics that are of particular significance for the Arctic’s inhabitants.

The New England Arctic Network (NEAN) will host its 2021 meeting at the University of New England in Portland, Maine. Additional information will be published soon. 

Arctic Symposium 2021 continues momentum in Arctic defense and security collaboration established in prior ALCOM-hosted events. AAS21 seeks to address the challenges faced by the U.S. military and our allies and partners in understanding and responding to our respective national interests. AAS21 is planned and organized by the Arctic Domain Awareness Center at the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) in support and in compliance to guidance from Alaskan Command (ALCOM) Staff and Commander. More information available soon.

Hosted entirely online the ArcticNet Virtual Annual Scientific Meeting 2021 (ASM2021) is a hub for Arctic research in Canada. The ASM2021 brings together researchers from the natural, health, and social sciences to meet the challenges and opportunities of a rapidly changing Arctic region, shaped by climate change and modernization. This conference will push the boundaries of our collective understanding of the Arctic and strengthen our ability to address the Arctic issues of today and tomorrow.

The National Academies’ Polar Research Board is convening the following session at the Fall AGU meeting.

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.