Date

Press Conference Announcement
Arctic in Flux: New Insights from the International Polar Year
American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting
San Francisco, California
Tuesday, 16 December 2008
9:00am, Moscone West, Room 3015

For further detail, please go to:
http://nsidc.org/news/press/20081209_AGUPressCon.html


The International Polar Year Office announces a press conference,
"Arctic in Flux: New Insights from the International Polar Year," to be
held Tuesday, 16 December 2008, at 9:00am, at the American Geophysical
Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, in San Francisco, California.

Continuing climate changes in the Arctic received renewed scientific
attention during the International Polar Year (IPY) - a scientific
research campaign focused on the Arctic and Antarctic, which is slated
to end in early 2009. This briefing will present early results from a
range of arctic studies conducted during IPY, based on climate models
and new observations taken from sea, land, and space. Findings include
the discovery of new seeps of the greenhouse gas methane along the East
Siberian Arctic Shelf, large increases in tundra greenness along North
America's arctic coasts, a lengthening snowmelt season, a second year of
ice mass loss in Greenland, and evidence that the predicted
amplification of arctic warming due to decreasing sea ice has already
begun.

Panelists include:
Igor Semiletov
Research Associate Professor, International Arctic Research Center,
University of Alaska Fairbanks. Fairbanks, Alaska, USA.

Julienne Stroeve
Research Scientist, National Snow and Ice Data Center, Cooperative
Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of
Colorado, Boulder. Boulder, Colorado, USA.

Marco Tedesco
Director, Cryospheric Processes and Remote Sensing Laboratory,
Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, City College of New York.
New York, New York, USA.

D. A. (Skip) Walker
Greening of the Arctic Principal Investigator, Alaska Geobotany Center,
Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska Fairbanks. Fairbanks,
Alaska, USA.

The press conferences will take place in the Press Conference Room
(Moscone West, Room 3015), on Level 3, directly above the Press Room.

Reporters may call in if they are not able to attend the briefing in person.
AGU will also provide this and other press conferences via the Web. For
instructions, please visit
http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm08/newsRemote.php.

For further information about this press conference, please go to:
http://nsidc.org/news/press/20081209_AGUPressCon.html.