Polar and Alpine Community News

In January 2022, the new Joint Body on the "Status of Mountain Snow Cover (JB-SMSC)" was launched. This Joint Body is a joint activity of the International Association for Cryospheric Sciences (IACS), the Mountain Research Initiative (MRI), and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), aiming to significantly improve the knowledge of the status and changes of the snow cover in mountain regions of the world. In addition to an in-depth analysis of snow changes and the underlying processes, the provision of data sets on snow cover in mountain regions is also a key objective. The JB is divided into four work packages, as follows:

• WP1: Mountain snow data quality control and homogenization for use in climatology and hydrology
• WP2: Status of snow cover: multi-decadal changes in mountain regions of the world
• WP3: Snow accumulation processes in mountain regions
• WP4: Snow ablation processes - research gaps in mountain snow modelling

The annual Festival is an open and free event that brings together people of diverse backgrounds that are interested in, and work on, engagement of citizens in science, policymaking and deliberative democracy in Europe (and globally). These include EU countries, EU institutions, civil society organisations, research and academia, and artists. The programme each year features a variety of events including open conversations, interactive sessions, artwork, and an exhibition of participatory and/or deliberative democracy projects. The Festival is also the principal annual networking event for the Community of Practice of the Competence Centre on Participatory and Deliberative Democracy. In 2020, the Festival was held entirely online. In 2022, however, it will be a hybrid event where participants will be able to attend and interact either in person – in Ispra, Italy, or Brussels, Belgium - and/or online.

Date: 20-21 October 2022

Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System (SIOS) is organizing a week-long training course on AI applications in Svalbard (AI4Svalbard) during 5-9 Sept. 2022, in Longyearbyen, Svalbard. You can find more information regarding this training course here. The application deadline is on 15^th May 2022.

The course is intended for scientists, master/Ph.D. students, engineers and technicians with no or modest experience with AI and machine learning in their research. Basic knowledge of programming languages (python) is preferable.

Looking for early career scientist to join the editorial board for the fifth State of Environmental Science in Svalbard report

Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System (SIOS) is a consortium of international institutions with research infrastructure in and around Svalbard. SIOS is building an integrated observing system for long-term measurements addressing Earth System questions.

SIOS publishes an annual State of Environmental Science in Svalbard (SESS) report. The first issue was released in January 2019. The report summarises the state of current knowledge of key Earth System Science parameters and analyses how these parameters influence one another. The SESS report outlines work conducted within the SIOS cooperation to optimise the observing system and recommends research priorities for the following year(s).

The Council of Managers of National Antarctic Programs (COMNAP), the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO), and the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) launched their 2022 Antarctic-related Fellowships for early-career researchers.

COMNAP, IAATO and SCAR work together to support talented early-career researchers, scientists, engineers, environmental managers, and other professionals. The purpose is to strengthen international capacity and cooperation in fields such as climate, biodiversity, conservation, humanities and astrophysics research by providing annual funding opportunities.

KOPRI is now accepting applications for the KOPRI Fellowship Program 2022.

The KOPRI Fellowship Program has three schemes: the KOPRI Asia Fellowship Program, the KOPRI Arctic Fellowship Program and the KOPRI Antarctic Fellowship Program. Applications for all the three fellowships are open until May 13, 2022.

Through the Service Calls, EU-PolarNet 2 is seeking support from the European research community to develop ideas for concrete research activities for the research needs defined in the Integrated European Polar Research Programme (EPRP). The funded Service Contract will support EU-PolarNet 2 in research prioritisation and propose topics for future research funding.

The first EU-PolarNet 2 Call for Services supports the projects Arctic Xchange and Co-Create. ArcticXchange will apply a transdisciplinary framework for knowledge co-production, involving natural scientists, social scientists, and reindeer herders. The Co-Create Consortium will provide the EU Commission with a Comprehensive Policy Brief as an evidence-based roadmap for achieving decolonial innovation in the Arctic research landscape and mainstreaming co-created and collaborative Arctic research conducted in equal partnership by Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers and rightsholders. Read more about the two services here: https://eu-polarnet.eu/services/.

We invite you to apply for the SnowEx Hackweek, July 11-15, 2022, hosted entirely in person by the University of Washington's eScience Institute in partnership with the NASA SnowEx Mission. Visit our website for details on how to apply.

Join us for five days of tutorials, data exploration, software development and community building focused on open source tools to analyze and visualize data. This year’s in-person hackweek will focus primarily on developing ongoing collaboration on radar and LiDAR snow retrievals, in situ observations and modeling, as well as tools for conducting open source science.