Arctic Change Conference
I attended a very interesting and well organised conference in Copenhagen last week: ‘The Changing Arctic Conference’ (link here) with focus on security, environment, and society. Back in the old days when I worked at the Danish Polar Center, we used to have an annual event of a Polar Science meeting. This later turned into the ‘Hindsgavl’ polar science meetings. The conference I attended last week was the first of its kind with this new setup and with focus on all three partner countries in the realm of Denmark (Denmark, Faroe Islands, and Greenland). It worked out really well in my opinion and it was interesting to attend the different sessions of security and environment (never made it to the society session). As could be expected there was a lot of worrying new data on e.g., diminishing sea ice coverage in the Arctic Ocean and military safety issues in the Arctic region. Further, the lack of data from the Russian field stations hampers the climate change modelling. Thanks to the University of Copenhagen for organising this excellent conference in the spectacular ‘Sorte Diamant’ library building! For once, there were so many new faces and people unknown to me, which just shows that a new generation of polar researchers are entering the field – and it gave of course an excellent opportunity to talk to new people 🙂