The workshop on the “Dynamics and Mass Budget of Arctic Glaciers and International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) Network on Arctic Glaciology (NAG)” was held in Geilo, Norway from 21 to 23 January in 2019.
The workshop has been organized 15 times by NAG, which was established in 1992 under the framework of IASC. Recently, one of the stresses of the NAG Workshop is cross-disciplinary researches on mass loss of Arctic glaciers and the Greenland ice sheet and its potential impacts on marine ecosystems and biodiversity. This urgent issue is also covered in the latest report on Snow, Water, Ice, Permafrost in the Arctic（SWIPA）by AMAP.
In 2018, “The importance of Arctic glaciers for the Arctic marine ecosystem” was proposed by IASC Cryosphere and Marine Working Groups as a cross-cutting activity. NAG Workshop is offering a special session for this activity to discuss the subject among a broad range of researchers in the world. In this special session, I gave a talk to introduce my oceanographic study in Greenland from chemical and biological aspects. Dr. M. Niwano from Meteorological Research Institute, Japan also participated in this workshop for the first time. He introduced his study, which focused on improvement of a model describing physical processes (snow/ice radiation, snow metamorphism, and so on) on the Greenland ice sheet. Many oceanographers participated in this workshop this year, suggesting increasing interests on the cross-cutting activity since I participated for the first time in 2017.
Studies regarding glacier-ocean interactions are attracting attention of Arctic research community as never before. Exchanges of study results and future prospects in the workshop are crucially important for the Cryosphere and Marine Working Groups, as well as researchers engaged in this field of science.
Naoya Kanna (Hokkaido University, a member of theme 2)
Photograph of IASC Network on Arctic Glaciology annual meeting 2019
