Conference Announcement
Global Environmental Change: The Role of the Arctic Region
13-17 October 2007
Nynashamn, Sweden
Registration Deadline: Monday, 30 July 2007
For further information, please go to:
http://www.esf.org/conferences/07240
or contact:
Anne Blondeel-Oman
E-mail: ablondeel [at] esf.org
The European Science Foundation announces the conference "Global
Environmental Change: The Role of the Arctic Region" to be held on 13-17
October 2007 in Nynashamn, Sweden. Chaired by Jorn Thiede of the Alfred
Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany, the conference is also
sponsored by the Vetenskapradet and the Swedish Research Council for
Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (FORMAS).
Dramatic and manyfold news of changes in the Arctic (i.e., destruction
of permafrost landscapes, shrinkage and thinning of the arctic sea ice
cover, reduction of the Greenland ice sheet) causes wonder about what
this will mean for the world. The presently ongoing International Polar
Year offers a unique chance to assess the modern processes which alter
marine and terrestrial environments in the Arctic and which control the
quality of life of arctic indigenous and non-indigenous populations. New
coring records demonstrate that the Arctic was ice-free during the Early
Tertiary, but that during mid-Tertiary it had cooled enough to acquire
its first ice covers.
The Pleistocene ice cores from Greenland have demonstrated fast and
dramatic changes of the atmospheric circulation over the Arctic whose
imprint have also been traced in oceanic and terrestrial paleoclimate
records from low latitudes. Only the ongoing warm climatic phase (the
Holocene) seems to have been relatively stable.
Modeling arctic climates and ocean environments suggests the complete
disappearance of the arctic sea ice cover over the coming century. This
leads to questions about what is in store for the future for the entire
Arctic and its people, its lands and seas, as well as for the entire
world. The conference will assess if credible answers can be found.
For further information and to register for the conference, please go
to:
http://www.esf.org/conferences/07240