Prime Minister John Key will visit Antarctica from 17 to 21 January to highlight New Zealand’s interests and activities in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean.

Kelly Tarlton’s SEA LIFE Aquarium has welcomed its latest addition to the family - seven newly-hatched Gentoo Penguins, hatched as part of the only Gentoo Penguin breeding programme in New Zealand.

The Royal New Zealand Navy’s Offshore Patrol Vessel HMNZS OTAGO has successfully completed its first patrol of the season in the Southern Ocean - one of the world’s most challenging environments.

A team of scientists from nine nations, led by Victoria University’s Dr Nancy Bertler, have made a huge breakthrough in Antarctica-successfully drilling more than 760m through the ice to the bedrock, on an island in the Ross Sea.

The New Zealand History Research Trust Fund has announced 11 award winners for 2013. The Trust is administered by Manatū Taonga/the Ministry for Culture and Heritage.

A formal arrangement covering areas for cooperation in the Southern Ocean has been signed by Maritime New Zealand (MNZ) and the Korea Coast Guard.

Experience a white Christmas on-the-ice with Antarctic penguin colony display Get closer than ever before

Antarctica New Zealand is proud to be a the founding partner of the Antarctic Blue Whale Project, a flagship collaborative research project bringing together shipping, logistics and scientific resources to better understand blue whale population health and dynamics over the last 50 years.

The summer tourist season is under way in the Antarctic and thousands of tourists are expected to visit the frozen continent over the coming months with many of them keen to view the happy feet of the small Adelie and the large Emperor penguins.

The Scott Base Movember team of 2012 is made up of sixteen mobros and four mosistas with home regions from Invercargill to Gisborne and lots in-between!! For many this is not the first year they have thrown away the razor and donned the Mo.

If you are interested in the Arctic Ocean and how science and policy work together, then Arctic Ocean Acidification conference organized by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) is a perfect venue to learn more this. The conference will take place in Bergen, Norway, 6-8 May 2013.

It will include talks by invited keynote speakers, oral presentations selected on the basis of submitted abstracts, poster presentations and short (3 minute) oral presentations of selected posters. A panel discussion will develop messages to be communicated to the Arctic Council Ministerial meeting that will take place in Sweden shortly after the Conference.

The main topics to be covered are:

- results from observational, experimental and modelling studies of past, present and future ocean acidification,

- responses of marine organisms and ecosystem structure, functioning and biodiversity

- perturbations to biogeochemical cycling and feedbacks to the climate system, and

- the economic, social and policy challenges of ocean acidification.

APECS is planning to organize a Discussion Panel, bringing together experts in Arctic Ocean acidification, decision makers and early career researchers. If you are going to this meeting and would like to take part in coordination of this event, please contact Anna Silyakova at anna.silyakova@gmail.com

Limited travel funds from AMAP will be available for early career researchers on a competitive basis, with priority for those who have submitted an abstract to the meeting.

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IMPORTANT: Deadlines are approaching soon - Abstracts for oral and poster presentation (max. 750 words) should be forwarded to the Conference organizers (amap@amap.no) by 25 January 2013.

For more information go to the conference website: http://www.amap.no/Conferences/aoa2013/about.html

For general questions, please contact Alexey Pavlov at alexey.pavlov@apecs.is

With the support of the Bulgarian Antarctic Institute APECS Bulgaria organized in Sofia in the last November and December several activities to celebrate for the first time the Antarctica Day.  

During the celebration about 200 students were actively involved. Several activities were conducted - lectures in schools, virtual balloon launch, creation of flag designs for Antarctica, interviews in newspapers and radio, photo exhibition etc.

·        20 November - Photo exhibition of Iglika Trifonova entitled “Antarctica – the cold south” in the National Library. Great success with the presence of former Prime Minister Mrs. Reneta Indzhova, former Rector of Sofia University and famous writer prof. Boyan Biolchev, the Director of Bulgarian Antarctic Institute prof. Christo Pimpirev and many guests. The exhibition remains in the National Library till 2 February 2013 and later will tour some of the Bulgarian cultural institutes in Europe.

·        28 November-1 December - Lectures about Antarctic mammals given by the early career scientists Denitsa Apostolova and Iglika Trifonova in schools in 2 Bulgarian towns: Sofia and Svoge. The educators replied questions of children aged between 9 and 11 years and encouraged them to paint flags for "Antarctica Day Flags".

·        12 December – Twenty students from the Eco-Bio Club "Green Clover" of the 1^st English School in Sofia made presentations on topics related to the poles. In the official hall of EU Information Centre the children aged between 16 and 18 years old talked about ice melting, penguins, scientific expeditions to the poles, marine world, auroras, polar flora and fauna, polar bears and pinnipeds mammals. Researchers from Bulgarian Antarctic Institute, early career scientists from APECS Bulgaria and students from the same school attended the 90 minutes lectures. It was extraordinary the enthusiasm of students discussing the importance of Polar Regions to conserve the planet and life as we know nowadays.

·        Children from several Bulgarian schools took a part with their paintings in the flagship activity "Antarctica Day Flags - From the Classroom to Antarctica.

This international conference is organized by and for young scientists (Master and PhD students, Post-Docs) working in the interdisciplinary field of Earth System research, with Earth System explicitly including societal aspects. You will find the opportunity to present your own research in a non-traditional, interactive and interdisciplinary setting. Additionally, the conference will provide a platform to understand and interpret the different meanings of and approaches to uncertainties in the variety of disciplines in Earth System science. Being targeted especially at a broad range of young researchers, you will have plenty of opportunity to expand your network with fellow early career scientists.

The conference continues the Young Scientists Conference series initiated by the three German Marine and Climate Science Clusters of Excellence in Bremen, Hamburg and Kiel. Unlike the earlier conferences, however, this time we invite all interested young Earth System scientists to join us in Hamburg, extending the reach of the three excellence clusters and covering all fields of natural and social scientific research dealing with the Earth System, including its governance and other interactions between the Anthroposphere and the natural environment.

Are you interested in participating? Block the date (23 - 25 September 2013) in your calendar and we will contact you again very soon with the launch of the conference website and the Call for Contributions.

Are you interested in being part of the community effort to get the conference going? Contact us at icyess2013@yess-community.org . There are many possibilities to shape this conference with varying degrees of time investment, ranging from simply advertising the conference at your institution to more formal participation in the organizing committee. We still need your contribution to the scientific program. You can also serve as an abstract reviewer or chair one of the sessions, giving you a better visibility in the growing network of Young Earth System Scientists.

We look forward to hear from you and welcome you in September in Hamburg.

For the organizing committee.

Sebastian Sonntag, Andreas Schmidt, Florian Rauser

Please feel free to spread this announcement to scientists from your network who might be interested!

The conference is organised by young scientists from various institutes and disciplines, in close collaboration with the School of Integrated Climate System Sciences (SICSS) and the Young Earth System Scientists community (YESS). It is funded by the Körber-Stiftung and the Cluster of Excellence CliSAP via SICSS (Hamburg), and supported by the Clusters of Excellence marum (Bremen) and Future Ocean (Kiel).

Before you can tackle the overwhelming task of huge writing projects, you must first put aside some widely held myths, say Maria Gardiner and Hugh Kearns. Full story from NatureJobs here. 

The Fram Centre

FRAM – High North Research Centre for Climate and the Environment (Fram Centre) contributes to maintaining Norway’s prominent status in the management of environment and natural resources in the North.

The Fram Centre is the short name for FRAM - High North Research Centre for Climate and the Environment. The Fram Centre is based in Tromsø, and consists of about 500 scientists from 20 institutions involved in interdisciplinary research in the fields of natural science, technology and social sciences.

The centre contributes to strengthening the connection between research and education. The Fram Centre is an important arena nationally as well as internationally, and contributes with inputs on climate-related issues.

Visit Fram's website to find out more!

The Research Council of Norway

The Research Council is Norway's official body for the development and implementation of national research strategy. The Council is responsible for enhancing Norway's knowledge base and for promoting basic and applied research and innovation in order to help meet research needs within society. The Research Council also works actively to encourage international research cooperation. Underlying all the Research Council's activities is the viewpoint that research expands the boundaries of what we know, understand and can achieve. Research adds cultural resonance to society and creates a viable framework for welfare, value creation and sustainable development. Through its efforts as an advisory body on research strategy issues, a research funding agency and initiator of meeting places and networks, the Research Council seeks to meet and constantly refine the objectives for Norwegian research policy.

Fore more information please visit the Research Council of Norway website

Norwegian Polar Institute

The Norwegian Polar Institute is Norway's central institution for research, environmental monitoring and mapping of the polar regions. The Institute is the Norwegian authorities' consultant and supplier of knowledge, and contributes to the best possible administration of Norwegian polar areas. Through active participation in national and international bodies, the Polar Institute is central when it comes to protecting national interests in matters of research and the environment. Approximately 110 persons are employed at the Institute in Tromsø, Svalbard and Dronning Maud Land.

For more information please visit the Norwegian Polar Institute website

Svalbard Science Forum

SSF is a forum which informs and coordinates all research in Svalbard, and is chaired by the Research Council of Norway. SSF provides overviews of infrastructure, information about logistics, research bases, application processes for permits and permissions etc. The main objective is to contribute to the development of Svalbard as a platform for arctic research in accordance with our strategic policy documents. SSF promotes cooperation between the different institutions in Svalbard, but is not involved in the internal affairs of these institutions.

Svalbard Science Forum allocates funding for fieldwork in Svalbard to Master students, PhD students and researchers from, or collaborating with, Norwegian institutions. The main priority is to support PhD and MSc students collecting field data necessary to complete their research projects and also researchers not established in Svalbard. The scholarship covers additional costs due to the fieldwork location in Svalbard.

Visit SSF website and check it yourself!

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Inuit, Quebec native groups, and representatives from Labrador are meeting this week in Kuujjuaq, Que., to attempt to come up with a management plan for the declining George River caribou herd. “There does not seem to be an agreement from the different groups on how to properly manage the herd,” said Johnny Peter, vice-president of renewable resources for Makivik Corporation, in Inuktitut. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2013/01/16/north-kuujjuaq-george-river-caribou.html

Fisheries scientists say Canada has been expanding its Arctic fishery without understanding very much about it. And that ignorance could threaten the future of the $65-million turbot fishery off Baffin Island, one of the few bright spots in the Nunavut economy."There's just too much guesswork," said George Rose of Newfoundland's Memorial University, whose co-authored work released last week in Iqaluit was contracted by one of Nunavut's fishing corporations and an environmental group. "We don't have a good way to age the fish. We don't know when they're maturing. We don't know much about their reproduction and even their growth rates. These are kind of fundamentals of fishery science." http://eyeonthearctic.rcinet.ca/home/canada/44-environment/2937-lack-of-research-threatens-canadas-only-arctic-fishery

Arctic Bay, an Inuit community in Canada’s northern Nunavut territory, is making plans to revive its tourism industry after a ban on filming at the floe edge caused at least one major tour operator to take its business elsewhere. The community’s Hunters and Trappers Organization banned filming at the floe edge in May 2007 in response to a National Geographic article on the narwhal hunt that they felt portrayed the community in a negative light. http://eyeonthearctic.rcinet.ca/home/canada/47-business/2946-inuit-community-plans-to-revive-tourism-industry

Every year, Masters and Doctoral students from universities across Canada head into the field to discover more about the country’s sensitive northern regions. More than 90 over the past five years have been funded by The W. Garfield Weston Foundation, in collaboration with organizations such as the Association of Canadian Universities for Northern Studies (ACUNS) and Wildlife Conservation Society Canada (WCS Canada).Through a competitive process, awards at the Masters, Doctoral and Fellowship level are presented to outstanding students based on academic excellence and leadership in natural science research in the north. http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/magazine/dec12/arctic_research_map.asp 

In the landscape of northern science in Canada, two scientists stand above the crowd showing excellence in their fields of study. Louis Fortier and Serge Payette have demonstrated a longstanding commitment to northern research, each being awarded a Canada research chair, published numerous times and work to shape the next generation of northern scientists. To honour and support their life’s work, Payette and Fortier each received a Weston Family Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Northern Research, in 2011 and 2012 respectively. http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/magazine/dec12/arctic_achievers.asp