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IARPC Public Webinar Series: MOSAiC Expedition Overview, 2:00 pm EDT/ 10:00 am AKDT on October 8, 2020. The Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee (IARPC) will host a public webinar providing an overview of the MOSAiC expedition. Throughout October, IARPC Collaborations will be holding a "MOSAiC Month" focused on the Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) expedition. This is the first webinar in that series. All are welcome to attend.
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(Inuit Circumpolar Council Alaska) Food Sovereignty and Self-Governance: Inuit Role in Managing Arctic Marine Resources (2020). For thousands of years, Inuit have been part of the Arctic ecosystem. Inuit have thrived and built their culture rooted in values that shape the relationships they have held with everything within this ecosystem. Those values-including respect, collaboration, and sharing-all aid in supporting healthy and harmonious relationships and communities. A core element of Inuit culture that incorporates these values is hunting, gathering, and preparing foods. Discussions about food security require an understanding of the far-reaching implications of how issues of food security interact with culture, history, management systems, and world views. The interconnections between all peoples, wildlife, and the environment within the Arctic ecosystem directly influences food security, and food sovereignty is distinctly tied to food security.
(Friends of Europe) After the Ice: The Arctic and European Security (Fall 2020). For most of the three decades since the end of the Cold War, the Arctic has been a zone of low tension, a glacial oasis of multilateral cooperation and a geopolitical backwater. That relative harmony is now under growing strain chiefly because of the resurgence of great power competition worldwide against a backdrop of accelerating global warming which is melting the polar ice cap at a record pace. This threatens disaster for the environment and the indigenous peoples of the Arctic, but also whets appetites for new shipping routes and access to undeveloped oil, gas and mineral resources.
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Media
 President Donald J. Trump Announces Intent to Appoint General Kee to USARC. Yesterday, President Trump announced his intent to appoint Major General Randy "Church" Kee, United States Air Force (ret) as a Commissioner on the U.S. Arctic Research Commission. Formal appointment by the White House will follow. Since January 2016, General Kee has served as the Executive Director of the Arctic Domain Awareness Center ( ADAC) at the University of Alaska, a DHS Center of Excellence. He will continue to lead ADAC, a distributed team of Science and Technology, Research & Development. In the U.S. Air Force, he led at the Squadron, Group, Wing and Air Ops Center levels. General Kee's staff assignments included U.S. Transportation Command, Headquarters USAF, and the U.S. Joint Staff in both Operations plus Strategic Plans and Policy Directorates. He has contributed to U.S. Arctic Strategy, supported domain awareness technology development, and Defense Support to Arctic crisis response. He culminated his military service as Director of Strategy, Policy, Planning and Capabilities for U.S. European Command in Stuttgart, Germany. General Kee is a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center Polar Institute and serves an important role for the International Cooperative Exchange for Polar Research. His USAF Biography is available here.
Pollution Over the Tibetan Plateau Linked to Sea Ice the Arctic. The Tibetan Plateau is one of the world's most pristine ecological regions. Known as the Third Pole, it contains the largest land ice masses outside the poles, with glacier meltwater contributing to water supplies for more than a billion people. Because of its sparse population, the Tibetan Plateau has negligible local pollution but is flanked by large deserts and the heavily populated Indo-Gangetic Plain of South Asia. This proximity makes the plateau vulnerable to natural atmospheric pollution from dust storms as well as to anthropogenic aerosols from industrial, transport, and agricultural emissions. EOS
 Found Consistent Mercury Levels in Arctic Seals. Ringed seals and other Arctic marine mammals are important in the diet of Arctic Indigenous peoples. A study spanning 45 years of testing indicates that mercury concentrations in ringed seals from the Canadian Arctic have remained stable, showing very limited declines over time. The authors of the Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry study noted that different climate parameters may have affected mercury accumulation in seals. Eurasia Review
The Arctic: A Delicate Icy Ecosystem. The Arctic is one of the most rapidly changing regions in the world. Diminishing sea ice, thawing permafrost and melting glaciers are all direct effects of rising global temperatures - driven by human-made emissions. Learn more about how satellites flying 800 km above our heads can help us monitor and understand the changes occurring in this remote region.The Arctic is a polar region located at the northernmost part of Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean, adjacent seas, and parts of Alaska (United States), Canada, Finland, Greenland (Denmark), Iceland, Norway, Russia, and Sweden. Land within the Arctic region has seasonally varying snow and ice cover, with predominantly treeless permafrost (permanently frozen underground ice) containing tundra. Arctic seas contain seasonal sea ice in many places. SciTech Daily
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Future Events
** New this week ** Arctic Policy Study Group: Powering Alaska's Arctic, 8:00 am AKDT on October 14, 2020 (virtual). Alaska's Arctic communities are innovating toward new and renewable energy opportunities. This panel will provide an overview of the trends that are driving clean energy and electrification projects in the Arctic as well as showcase several projects that demonstrate how communities and energy providers are using the Arctic environment and new technologies to expand electrification, decarbonization, and a brighter energy future. This event is hosted by Commonwealth North
The Arctic Resilience Forum: Food Security, October 14, 2020 (virtual). The Arctic Resilience Forum will be convened every Wednesday from 11:30am - 1:00pm (EST) over a series of ten weeks, beginning October 7, 2020. The online, organized by the Arctic Council and the Harvard Kennedy School, series will engage the broadest audience possible in conversations about how to build the resilience of Arctic communities and ecosystems across a variety of focus areas.
Alaska Federation of Natives 2020 Convention, October 15-16, 2020 (Virtual). The annual convention serves as the principal forum and voice for the Alaska Native community in addressing critical issues of public policy and government. The convention convenes thousands of official delegates and participants from membership organizations across the state. At the Convention, delegates discuss strategic opportunities and challenges, listen to memorable keynote speeches, hear reports from political leaders and presentations from expert panels, and share stories resilience, experiences, strengths, knowledge and hope for the future.
The Arctic Resilience Forum: Renewable Energy, October 21, 2020 (virtual). The Arctic Resilience Forum will be convened every Wednesday from 11:30am - 1:00pm (EST) over a series of ten weeks, beginning October 7, 2020. The online series, organized by the Arctic Council and the Harvard Kennedy School, will engage the broadest audience possible in conversations about how to build the resilience of Arctic communities and ecosystems across a variety of focus areas.
** New this week ** IARPC Public Webinar Series Program Manager Chat: National Science Foundation Support for Arctic Doctoral Dissertation Research, 2:00 pm EDT on October 23, 2020. The National Science Foundation and IARPC Collaborations will host a program manager chat about a solicitation for proposals for Arctic Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grants. The goal of this solicitation is to attract research proposals that advance a fundamental, process, and systems-level understanding of the Arctic's rapidly changing natural environment and social and cultural systems, and, where appropriate, to improve our capacity to project future change. During this webinar, NSF program officers will give an overview of this funding opportunity and will be available to answer questions. All are welcome to attend.
11th Maritime Risk Symposium 2020, October 26-30, 2020 (virtual). The Critical Infrastructure Resilience Institute (CIRI), a Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence, will host the 11th Annual Maritime Risk Symposium (MRS 2020) in collaboration with the National Academy of Sciences. The theme of MRS 2020 is "Maritime Resilience." DHS defines resilient infrastructure systems as the "ability of systems, infrastructures, government, business, communities, and individuals to resist, tolerate, absorb, recover from, prepare for, or adapt to an adverse occurrence that causes harm, destruction, or loss of national significance." Through presentations, panels and open forums, the symposium will focus on the attributes of resilience to adversarial events of national significance in the maritime domain, using our experience with COVID-19 as a driver for the discussion. The objective is less about the specific impacts COVID-19 had and is having, and more on how that event informs us on resiliency for future global upsets, in terms of what works, what gaps have been exposed, and what research questions ought to be studied as a first step towards enhancing Maritime Resilience.
The Arctic Resilience Forum: Human Health and Pandemics, October 28, 2020 (virtual). The Arctic Resilience Forum will be convened every Wednesday from 11:30am - 1:00pm (EST) over a series of ten weeks, beginning October 7, 2020. The online series, organized by the Arctic Council and the Harvard Kennedy School, will engage the broadest audience possible in conversations about how to build the resilience of Arctic communities and ecosystems across a variety of focus areas.
The Arctic Resilience Forum: Gender, November 18, 2020 (virtual). The Arctic Resilience Forum will be convened every Wednesday from 11:30am - 1:00pm (EST) over a series of ten weeks, beginning October 7, 2020. The online series, organized by the Arctic Council and the Harvard Kennedy School, will engage the broadest audience possible in conversations about how to build the resilience of Arctic communities and ecosystems across a variety of focus areas.
The Arctic Resilience Forum: Socio-Ecological Resilience, November 25, 2020 (virtual). The Arctic Resilience Forum will be convened every Wednesday from 11:30am - 1:00pm (EST) over a series of ten weeks, beginning October 7, 2020. The online series, organized by the Arctic Council and the Harvard Kennedy School, will engage the broadest audience possible in conversations about how to build the resilience of Arctic communities and ecosystems across a variety of focus areas.
The Arctic Resilience Forum: Financing Resilience, December 2, 2020 (virtual). The Arctic Resilience Forum will be convened every Wednesday from 11:30am - 1:00pm (EST) over a series of ten weeks, beginning October 7, 2020. The online series, organized by the Arctic Council and the Harvard Kennedy School will engage the broadest audience possible in conversations about how to build the resilience of Arctic communities and ecosystems across a variety of focus areas.
The Arctic Resilience Forum: Infrastructure, December 9, 2020 (virtual). The Arctic Resilience Forum will be convened every Wednesday from 11:30am - 1:00pm (EST) over a series of ten weeks, beginning October 7, 2020. The online series, organized by the Arctic Council and the Harvard Kennedy School, will engage the broadest audience possible in conversations about how to build the resilience of Arctic communities and ecosystems across a variety of focus areas.
2021 Alaska Marine Science Symposium, January 26-28, 2021 (virtual). The Alaska Marine Science Symposium (AMSS) has been bringing together scientists, educators, resource managers, students, and interested public for over twenty years to discuss the latest marine research being conducted in Alaskan waters. Over 700 people attend this 4-day long conference held annually during the month of January. Each day of the conference highlights important Alaskan marine ecosystems: Gulf of Alaska (Tuesday), Bering Sea & Aleutian Islands (Wednesday), and the Arctic (Thursday). Research topics discussed range from ocean physics, fishes and invertebrates, seabirds, marine mammals, to local traditional knowledge. Since its inception, NPRB has been a proud sponsor and one of the leading organizers of AMSS.
Arctic Frontiers 2021, February 1-4, 2021 (virtual). Arctic Frontiers started out in 2006 assembling the first global scientific conference on economic, societal and environmental sustainable growth in the north. In February 2021, we will arrange the 15th conference with the theme "Building Bridges". The conference has a pan arctic perspective and builds new partnerships across nations, generations and ethnic groups. Arctic Frontiers provides a forum for dialogue and communication between science, government and industry in the Arctic.
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.
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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