Hi DaymD, this is Stefan from Norway. I was out sampling on the Norwegian island Svalbard/ Spitzbergen, which is in the high Arctic and I was also part of a cruise going to the Barents Sea and the Arctic Ocean. During these times I have seen a few "dire" situations directly. This was mostly trash in the ocean and on the island. But this is probably not the "dire situation" you look for. In terms of climate change, this is pretty hard to see, especially if you only go once. When we went out on the Barents Sea, the sea ice was fairly far North. This means, it was a year with low total sea ice. But is that an effect of climate change? It could also be an anomaly of this particular year. So only by talking to the captain and the older scientists on board, who all had been there a few times over the last years and decades, revealed that the ice used to be further South. That is an indicator, but it is also what we call "anecdotal evidence". This means, single people saw something, but did not measure it scientifically. So in the end, we need to go back to sea ice charts and models and check what really happens over a long time to actually see the effect of climate change. But if we do, yes, there is less ice in the Arctic. A similar example would be glaciers, where you can see where the have been 10-20-30 years back and measure the decline. Glacier Gray in Patagonia (Chile) is a good example here. I hope that answers your question.

Heisann,

that is a really cool question, and I had to think about it.

Myth: The Gulf Stream will stop and we will all freeze to death. Well, the Gulf Stream is slowing and we might eventually see it stopping, but not within a day. New York, you are save in this respect. Interestingly, a similar thing was found in the Southern Ocean recently: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-65120327

Another myth: The ice is dead. While glacier ice is pretty dense and only a few pretty bad ass microbes manage to life in there (snow algae, etc.), sea ice is pretty porous and a lof of stuff lives in the small channels. Fish, crustaceans, a whole array of planktonic critters, and of course my beloved microbes as well. But as so often, we know very little about it.

Fact: There are many things that deserve more attention. i think most people finally got this climate change thing and the melting of the ice etc. and that it is not a good thing. But what many people don't talk about is e.g. the effect on arctic communities. The change in the environment, especially with less snow and ice, can have severe impacts on the locals that traditionally life under these conditions and need them, e.g. to get their lifestock to the summer pastures by crossing a frozen river. The river is not frozen anymore and they have to change their lifes completely.

Another fact: Changes in the spring timing. I just recently read that in some regions spring is now on average nearly three weeks earlier (not this year in Norway though...). This means, plants are blossoming earlier, insects hatch earlier, but the larger animals, like birds, might still come late from their winter quarters. They lay eggs, but the peak insect season is over when they hatch, so what to feed the young ones on? This is just one example, it is probably similar for many animals and plants, which phase changes in the annual rhythm. This could get problematic, but i haven't seen much attention to it.

Hello! Danielle here, I'm a PhD student working primarily in the Arctic marine environment. This is a fun question -- mainly I have spent time on ice breakers during field campaigns as well as a bit of time up in Svalbard. The research ships can have a very intense environment, after a couple of days it really starts to feel like you have spent weeks together with the same group of people. This is really a perfect setting for people to meet new ship-romances (whether they admit it or not that is a second thing) -- but I agree with one of the other comments from Stefan earlier, a lot of these field campaigns seem to be their own social experiments in a way! In my experience there is also a high likely hood that any flirty behaviour is noticed by the rest of the crew pretty fast, for me it always ends up feeling a little bit like you are at an adult summer camp forming some pretty deep connections while also "giggling" a bit about different developing relationships. For the second part of your question about what do to for fun -- Svalbard is a really incredible place to explore! Personally, I am pretty excited to be outdoors at home but in Svalbard it is on another level, and with the added element of having to keep polar bear safety in mind for even small hikes! :) Thanks for the question!

I currently live in Tromsø, a great city surrounded by mountains. You can practice lots of outdoor activities here like kayaking, skiing, climbing, diving, biking and much more!!! If you are a city person maybe this is not your place even though there are some students and tourism so even if there is a small city there are some things to do in the city and some ambiance in the bar! My favorite activity in winter is skiing the landscape is amazing and the mountains are so close that you can go after work!! But unfortunately this year I am not able to ski due to an injury and I have to confess that this winter is harder mentally because the winter is very long up here! Relating to dating a fun fact is that many couples I know here fell in love during a stay in Svalbard :P

In the town of Longyearbyen on Svalbard there are a number of bars and even a night club (Huset!) which we visited when being there for research for a couple of weeks. I remember we tried using Tinder while there and the only people nearby were those of us sitting together or in Tromsø (>900km away!) so not so successful :)

On field stations there is usually quite a good social scene with the other people there as the others have said. Since you are so remote you can form some very good friendships with people quite quickly, and getting to be in such a special place as the polar regions with someone is a great bonding experience.

On research ships, particularly in the Arctic, since the internet doesn't always work, you tend to play a lot of board games, or watch movies (many ships have a very big DVD collection) when taking a break from the research.

Hei, hei, this is a very interesting question that I have asked myself and haven't come to a proper conclusion. Sorry, bummer first. This might be, because I have been to Antarctica, but not as a tourist, so it is hard to say what exactly happens when they come and how that could impact the environment. A quick google revealed this paper (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301479722002079) which also comes to the conclusion that it is hard to estimate. But lets have a look what I can think about.

So the tourism is by ship, because only very few tourists fly into King Georges Island and hang out there. And since this is the base for most expeditions, their impact in addition to the stations, scientists, military, etc. is probably not really relevant. So ships.

Ships are generally impacting marine life by their noise, movements, and especially by the release (voluntary or not) of trash, oils, gas, paint, etc. into the environment. So this will have an impact. Luckily not soo many companies go to Antarctica s of now, so I believe that the impact of the fishing fleet (especially the illegal ones) are larger. And as far as I understand, there are also very strict regulations for these companies and they use very modern ships.

On land, when the tourists walk around, this is usually in small areas and designated landing bays etc.. There, the impact of the tourists directly can be high, but also very local. Birds nest there and might be disturbed, other animals as well, trash can be left behind, people leave their germs (wild toilets...), and many more things. There I can see an impact, although it is very local.

So in my opinion (and this is an opinion, not fact based now) I think it is not good, but also not the worst we are doing to the white continent right now.

Apparently, yes! Historically, ham radio was one of the only ways of quickly communicating in remote places, including research stations in the Arctic and Antarctic. But there are still operators today, for instance, in remote parts of Canada, Greenland and in Antarctica. It's a useful back-up system for communication since satellite and internet communications can easily be lost in bad weather, but it also provides a fun activity too!

Hei,

1. Personally, there are three things that surprised me in polar science.

A) How many people actually are working in polar science. I thought it was far less, since it always sounded that only a few chosen once do this stuff. But there are actually many. I might be biased by being in Norway though and here is a strong polar focus.

B) How tough the environment is. Here I talk not about the Arctic, I talk about the research environment/ the academic work environment. It is apparently a very relevant topic, but still there is little funding or jobs.

C) How little respect people have for our work and the facts we produce. It is just that very often you run into people that don't trust the specialists. I mean, if a medical doctor says you have cancer, you trust that person right? If a doctor in bio/physics/geo tells you the earth has cancer, you ignore it and claim some wild stuff you heard from your neighbor is true? Pretty stunning.

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About the man made material, I guess you mostly mean plastics. However, the answers would be (mostly) true for chemicals and other materials too. It is pretty frightening to see, but so far, we know very little about it and the effects, especially in polar regions. So this is a bit tough to answer, since we don't even know how much is out there. Let's start at the micro scale.

The microbial world is probably not much affected directly by microplastic in the sense that they die. Here, microplastic could only provide a vector for the transport of microbes, but also fish and mollusk larvae etc. across the oceans. Many organisms and organism states prefer an attached lifestyle. This means they stick to stuff. This stuff floats around and degrades...or not if it is microplastic. So the microplastic carries these organisms around the world, which can lead to the spread of disease (unlikely) and invasive species (more likely).

On the other micro scale, this would be the uptake of microplastic into organisms. There, it is known that we find plastic in fish and crustaceans, which then find their way to some peoples tables. So there is an uptake into higher organisms. What the microplastic does there and how the effects are, is not well known (at least to me), but i am fairly sure it is not a beneficial effect. Alarming was the recent finding of nanoplastics in human blood. This means, it is at the core of where it can get and this for sure will not be good for us...or any other organism that has these particles in their blood.

On the macro scale, the classic example are sea birds, whos stomachs are full of plastic and they starve to death. Google "plastic and sea birds" and you get hundrets of pictures. And what is true for birds, it is true for all other marine critters. Fish, turtles, whales, all found with plastic in their stomachs. So this has a huge impact. Ghost nets would be the next higher category then, which are known to still fish and by that kill a lot of sea life. Unfortunately, relicts of the fishing industry are the most abundant plastic pieces found on the open ocean, so their impact is large. Sorry, I don't have numbers here, but this should be easy to google.

And on the global scale, this is happening everywhere, so it happens also in polar regions. And on a time scale, this will only get worse, since the production doesn't stop and plastic doesn't degrade. So it doesn't go away for many hundrets of years. Careful here, some companies claim it degrades, but ask pointy if it just becomes invisible (so microplastic) or if it is really degraded in its chemical compounds. Which in the end means, plastic accumulates and the effects will increase.

This is an excessive topic, so sorry for the rather short answer. For further studies, start here: https://ps.boell.org/en/plastic-atlas

I haven't been to either of both, but I would say South Pole. If only because you can actually see it, the other pole is about 4000m deep in the ocean. But the ice up there is beautiful...

I am certainly not a nutritionist, but your body burns a lot of calories trying to stay warm when you are out in the extreme cold of the polar regions. Making sure you eat high caloric density foods (e.g., high protein and fat foods) before you go out onto the sea ice or on a long snowmobile drive to your sampling site, for example, will help keep your core warm. Dehydration is also something to watch out for. People generally don't drink enough water when it's cold because you don't experience thirst the same way as when it is hot and humid around you, and people don't want to drink cold water when it's well below freezing outside! So a thermos of water, tea or soup is your best friend to stay hydrated and warm while in the field.

Being on a boat in the Barents Sea Ice feels like a dream, but you wake up pretty quickly when you hit -10°C winds or have to do your sampling.

Luckily, I am a microbial ecologist and bacteria and archaea life everywhere. If I don't work in the Arctic, I work in the Amazon, or in the food industry, or in a hospital. So no biggy for me. But...the core of the question is, when do the polar regions melt.

I would love to leave this to the ice specialists that are coming in here later and maybe somebody can comment. To my knowledge, this will take some more time. How much, I don't know, but I doubt that I will see an ice free Greenland in my lifetime.

Ecologist here also, even after the ice has melted there is still an ecosystem there, it will just be different to the one we have now. A lot of research is going on to understand how a "new" Arctic might look. Particularly for algae, we are unsure if the ice loss will lead to more of them (since more sunlight gets to the water) or less. This is because as light hits water it will warm it up and cause what we call stratification (warmer water is lighter than cold water so forms 2 separate layers) and reduces the amount of nutrients which can come up from the deep water which algae need to grow. There is also research going on looking back into the past when temperatures have also been warmer and trying to understand what conditions were like and organisms that lived at that time were. We can use this to try and guess what might happen in the future!

Many nations are involved in polar research. In Antarctica, more than 40 countries operate research stations across the continent. Some of the countries producing the most Antarctic science, I would say, are (not in a particular order) Germany, United Kingdom, United States, and Australia which all have very large and active Antarctic research programs and infrastructure. However, there are a lot of other countries with dedicated Antarctic research programs and vessels too like South Korea, France, Italy, etc.

There are some private endeavors in polar research still, despite the expense! Some companies like National Geographic, the Great Barrier Reef Foundation and others support Antarctic research. There are also a lot of efforts in Antarctica for citizen science in collaboration with tourist ships which are also a private source of "funding" for research.

And a followup - how are you treated as scientists in each program, is it the same all around or are some more everyone is equal and others have a bit more segregated?

Hi! This is Amanda, a benthic ecologist currently working in Tromsø, Norway.

If you are a student at a university, or even in high school, a great way to start getting involved in research is to talk to scientists at a local university and see what projects they are currently working on. If something interests you, ask if you can help! The worst they can say is no :) For example, bachelor students conducting thesis research often get to work in a lab or participate in field sampling trips. During my Ph.D., we had at least 4 undergraduate students working on thesis projects who were able to come on research cruises all the way to Antarctica. The more experience you get with research early and make your interests known to your professors, the more likely it is that you will be able to help on a research cruise. You can also look for outreach events. For example, sometimes research vessels are open for tours when they are in port, and research facilities (including universities and museums) host open house days when they showcase what research they are conducting. These can be great ways to learn what is going on at a university near you, or learn about something that might really excite you!

Hei,

​

Research Cruise: First it depends on your expertise. Research cruises are very expensive, so space is given to those who can contribute in some way. These people are mostly scientists from the fields of Biology, Physics, Oceanograpyh, geology, etc. But there are occasionally also artists on board for outreach purposes. And of course the crew of the ships, should you be a mariner. If not, this gets very difficult. Sorry.

Research Projects: Same question about your profession and level. if you are a student, you could study at universities with polar themes or do your bachelors/masters/PhDs there in a field relevant for polar science. If you are a scientists, collaborations are usually welcome and you have to talk to your colleagues in the field. If you are neither, it again gets a bit tricky. Most scientist are open to discuss your contribution to projects, but they have to be meaningful. So I would suggest to look at universities you are interested in. You could start by looking at the different APECS branches to know the countries, and then go to polar networks, like SCAR, and check the members. And also Universities in polar regions. This way you can find groups and see what they work on. And then you think about how you could be of use for them and help them to achieve their goals. Or propose a project with their expertise and yours and why it should be combined. And with that you approach them and see what the situation is. In general, talk to people, scientists are usually friendly. Professors might only delete your mails as spam if you come across too industrial or "begging".

Not really a very motivating answer, I know. But for a lay person to become member of a project is difficult. Locally, you could check for citizen science projects, but i am right now not aware of a polar one, sorry.

Hi! This is Eva a Phd student in zooplankton ecosystem dynamics at UiT(Tromsø,Norway).

It has been shown that mercury accumulates in fish tissue, and humans who consume a lot of fish may consume elevated levels of mercury. The content f mercury is directly correlated with fish size. In 2006 it was reported Greenland halibut (GH) caught in the Barents Sea had shown mercury levels exceeding the European Union’s upper limit of 0.5 mg/kg wet weight. After this, a larger Study was initiated to gain more knowledge about mercury and other metal concentrations in GH. This larger Study showed that mercury concentrations in Greenland halibut fillets were higher than those found in other marine species living in the Barents Sea, Norwegian Sea, and North Sea and 14% of the analyzed fish contained elevated levels of mercury. In this study, it was found that mercury concentrations varied geographically, with much lower levels found in the shallower waters in the easternmost parts of the Barents Sea than in the deeper areas along the shelf slope. Because of this further investigation must be done to be able to know better know the sources of polluted metals such as studies relating to the diet of GH. But for the moment the source of these metals is associated with air emissions. So the reduction of Hg emissions will protect the environment and human health. You can look at this study model based which shows a temporal decrease in mercury in GH and they associate Hg in GH to Hg air emissions, decreasing trophic position, and lower demersal prey use.

Sources:

Bank, M. S., Frantzen, S., Duinker, A., Amouroux, D., Tessier, E., Nedreaas, K., ... & Nilsen, B. M. (2021). Rapid temporal decline of mercury in Greenland halibut (Reinhardtius hippoglossoides). Environmental Pollution, 289, 117843.

Julshamn, K., Frantzen, S., Valdersnes, S., Nilsen, B., Maage, A., & Nedreaas, K. (2011). Concentrations of mercury, arsenic, cadmium and lead in Greenland halibut (Reinhardtius hippoglossoides) caught off the coast of northern Norway. Marine Biology Research, 7(8), 733-745.

I am not aware of these types of studies being carried out in polar regions, but maybe I should inform myself better since I'm not sure. There are some research grants to conduct research in Polar regions but sometimes they are not very well spread I highly suggest you follow APECS news and Instagram (apecs.norway) we try to spread offers related to Norway.

I did a quick google search and found that there is some literature on psychometric research in polar research (some examples at the end of the post). I would guess national research councils would be the best option (like NSF) for this type of funding, but if you are interested you could contact some of the authors of these papers and ask for their suggestions! :)

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42797-019-00013-6#ethics

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272494405801872

Most expeditions are 2-4 weeks only, but some are longer. I have only done 6 weeks in Antarctica and as an avid traveler, i have never been homesick. Loneliness is a different thing, but usually you are there with a team and not alone. I have also not heard of cases where colleagues had problems. But there is no preparation, that I know of.

at least for most expeditions, a medical check is required to go on the expeditions. This is particularly relevant for Antarctica since the nearest hospital is very far away! You can get homesick, like missing loved ones, pets or "creature comforts", but as the previous poster said it usually isn't so long and you are busy with work or admiring being in such a special place you tend to soak it up as much as you can.

I personally have never been to Antarctica, I haven't tried it either, so I don't know exactly how difficult it is to get a job there. But taking into account the experience of colleagues and some of the job offers I have seen I think it is important to have some previous experience in polar environments as well as having some physical fitness and mental strength. I would say that in all or almost all long-stay selection processes both physical and psychological tests are carried out. For fieldwork, I guess it's like everything else in science, it's important to have a good CV and be lucky to find the research team at the time they run a project in Antarctica. However, not only researchers have the opportunity to work there. On the research stations, there are jobs for computer scientists, mechanics, cooks, divers, and much more. There is also more and more tourism in Antarctica and there is a need for guides with experience in extreme situations to fill these jobs. Safety courses and experience in polar regions/high mountain areas I personally think are highly valued when it comes to getting a job in Antarctica.

many stations (both Arctic and Antarctic) will have those who work in food preparation, logistics and medicine - so not research orientated. Some of the big employers would be the British Antarctic Survey in the UK or the National Science Foundation in the US (https://www.nsf.gov/geo/opp/opportun.jsp) so there are options for non research positions.

Some organisations have also hired people to work on social media and communications to bring these environments closer to the public :)

I think you can find several strange things in the Arctic! Personally, it's hard for me to get used to seeing people around Longyearbyen (Svalbard) with a rifle on their back like the one who wears a backpack

Hmm...I think the cabins on Svalbard, where you sometimes hide from the cold for lunch or to warm up before going on are pretty unique. In some you feel thrown back to very early days of polar exploration. I also found the ice caves of Svalbard quite strange and interesting. You crawl through a small hole in the ground and suddenly after a few meters you are in a 5 m high cavern of ice with a lot of different colors. And in Antarctica the Russian church is quite a strange thing to see.

When on a reconnaissance flight with the helicopter along the shelf ice edge in Antarctica we discovered the leftovers of a research station/research container of unknown origin. I found it incredible that we were for days on the ship without seeing anything human made and then found traces of humankind left behind. Antarctica is an incredibly large continent, so the chance to discover something like this was rather small, I believe.

Hi,

pretty broad question. There are many datasets available in repositories, like NMDC https://www.nmdc.no/. Here you get all kinds of data in the usual format (Darwin Core Archives or netCDF). If you are looking for sequencing data (assuming you mean extremophile microbes) then I would check ENA (https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/browser/) or NCBI (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/). But there are many more around the world. Check if your country has a center. These center also often have courses or at least some documentation about how to use them and what to do with the data. And for a start up, best ask a science friend. Some of these things are tailored to specific disciplines which use specific programs etc., and so they are not easily accessible for people from outside. Which is a shame, but also has some practical reasons, like data complexity and ownership etc.

The field of bioinformatics is what we would call for using molecular data to understand more about organisms in different environments (including extreme environments). There are a number of free or relatively cheap courses online that can be used to start (Udemy has a course here.) If you search for "bioinformatic courses online" on google you should find some. Most molecular data is placed on open source repositories meaning they are available to everyone. Other datasets as mentioned in the other post can sometimes be hard to acquire not through an institution, but this is changing slowly to be more open I would say.

Many questions can be answered using this data, I would say the difficult thing is defining the question - there is so much data it is easy to get lost when exploring it. You might be interested in understanding if x species of bacteria is affected by temperature, or if the total microbial community is different between different kinds of ice - these are all things you could answer with this data.

>Do you know Kent in Iqaluit

Hi there!

This is Hugo currently working with the population dynamics of Emperor Penguins using satellite imagery analysis from Cambridge, UK.

Are you talking about the Iqaluit’s Brown Row condo units that haven’t had water or sewage services for several weeks, right?

>How about the trees from the eocene on Axel Heiberg?

Right now, yes!

Historically, the Inuit and Innu have not been participants in the governance of Arctic shipping for example, but efforts are underway to better account for their concerns concerning the operations of vessels in their waters through partnerships. There is a higher need for Arctic Indigenous to be active in different forms of collaboration due to their knowledge of the ecosystems!

Also, I never saw the Smoking Hills or even Axel Heiberg island, but it should be an amazing experience!