I attended the American Geological Union (AGU) Fall Meeting this week in San Francisco. It’s billed as “the largest worldwide conference in geophysical science,” with over 20,000 attendants. There was a vast number of talks on the cryosphere, which I’ll try to cover over the next few days. One session I attended, “Frontier Science from Extended Continental […]
You may have heard of the U.N., but have you ever heard of UNRISD? Perhaps not – as a research institute they aren’t going to grab as many headlines as the WHO, UNESCO or the Security Council. Yet the work they do is just as valuable, the latest example being a new program exploring when […]
For all the talk of China and the Arctic, there’s one dark horse that definitely made itself known at the Arctic Circle: Singapore. With a speech that hit all the right notes, Sam Tan Chin Siong, Senior Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a Member of Parliament, described the contributions Singapore can […]
The U.S. federal government shutdown’s dire consequences for research in Antarctica made the front page of The New York Times website today. On October 8, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced that it was canceling the U.S. Antarctic Research Program for 2013. The program has been placed on caretaker status, meaning that staff will be […]
On the heels of the opening of the Arctic Council’s Permanent Secretariat in Tromsø, Norway, two new Arctic research centers in China and Russia have been announced while one in Canada has made progress towards becoming reality. China-Nordic Arctic Research Institute First, Chinese and Nordic representatives announced plans to establish the China-Nordic Arctic Research Institute. University […]
2011 proved a tumultuous year for states. The Arab Spring evidenced that stifling dissent through oppression and supporting autocracies should not be the status quo policy of the United States. Now we see states being made anew. How will these states fully differ from their previous forms? Will their previous economic or political strongmen truly be ousted […]
A quick post to direct readers to the new climate change portal website, run by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration. Launched earlier this month, the site is intended to be a one-stop-shop for all U.S. climate related information. According to the NOAA, the site is designed to address […]