Arctic Tipping Points

Arctic Frontiers holds an annual conference in Tromsø, Norway to discuss multiple perspectives of Arctic issues. The conference brings together stakeholders from the Arctic nations and the European Union, including decision- and policy- makers, government authorities and industry representatives, regional interest groups, top scientists and NGO’s. The meeting combines science and policy, with cultural events in surroundings that are conducive for networking. The annual conference is hosted by the University of Tromsø. Arctic Frontiers offers modern congress facilities, wide-ranging cultural activities including concerts, films, and exhibitions, and live internet broadcast with simultaneous translation into Russian and English.

Several ATP people are giving presentations during this conference this week.

www.arctic-frontiers.com

Presentations at a recent ASLO session “Impacts of Global Warming on Polar Ecosystems”, in Nice, France, co-chaired by the ATP team members Susana Agusti and Mikael Sejr, will result in two specific volumes. A Feature Section on impacts of climate warming on marine and freshwater polar ecosystems, containing a set of 4-5 synthesis and review papers, will be published in the journal ECOSYSTEMS. A special issue reporting original research on impacts of climate warming on marine and freshwater polar ecosystems to be published in the journal POLAR BIOLOGY. Both volumes will be coordinated by S. Agustí, M. Sejr, and C. M. Duarte.

More than half of the 22 invited and contributed manuscripts are partly or entirely derived from the ATP project. The manuscript will be submitted from September 20th to October 30th 2009.

S. Agusti, C. Duarte, M. Sejr and P. Wassmann convened at the Cape de Salines Lighthouse Field Station on Mallorca in order to work on the volume and to write one of the contributions for the feature section for Ecology: Footprints of climate change in the Arctic Marine Ecosystem.

The official start date for ATP was 1 February 2009.  More than 30 persons involved in the project participated in the  Kick-off meeting, which was held in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, in March.

Most of the activity these first months has been concentrated around the preparations for the first field and experimental season, starting in mid-June this year.  A two weeks cruise with the RV Jan Mayen will take place  around Svalbard, followed by 3 weeks of experimental work at the University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS), in Longyearbyen.