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SCAR Newsletter: Issue 6, April 2006

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SCAR News

SCAR Fellowships for 2006-2007 Announced.

Postgraduate and Postdoctoral students from SCAR Member Countries are encouraged to apply for one of the 3-5 SCAR Fellowships, which carry a bursary of up to US$10,000 per annum. General information about SCAR fellowships is also available.
Deadline for submission of applications: 31 May 2006

SCAR XXIX Meeting, Hobart, Tasmania, July 2006.

XXIX SCAR meeting logo

For registration and more information go to: www.scarcomnap2006.org
Abstract submissions closed on 13 February 2006. Over 700 abstracts have been received.
The XXIX SCAR meeting will comprise:

Over 700 abstracts have been received for oral and poster sessions for the SCAR Open Science Conference. This will make for a lively and interesting meeting. Those who have not yet registered are encouraged to do so. A second circular will be issued in due course.

SCAR Open Science Conference Session list:

100 Plenary
111 Physical Sciences SSG sub-Plenary
112 Life Sciences SSG sub-Plenary
113 Geosciences SSG sub-Plenary
210 Evolution and structure of the Antarctic continent
211 Antarctic Tectonics and Siesmicity
221 Cenozoic Climate and the transition to the Icehouse
223 Pleistocene variability recorded in sediments and ice cores
224 Palaeoclimate of the Holocene and recent past
230 Permafrost and Soils in Antarctica
310 Subglacial lakes
311 Surface and bedrock topography and dynamics of the Antarctic ice sheet
312 Ice sheet and glacier mass balance and variability
313 Characteristics of ice shelves, ice tongues and icebergs, and their interaction with the ocean
320 Weather and climate of the Antarctic region
321 CO2, Ozone and other atmospheric trace gases over the Antarctic
322 Aerosols
330 Sea ice and its interaction with Southern Ocean climate
331 The Southern Ocean and its role in the global climate system
332 Water masses, circulation and variability in the Southern Ocean
333 Biogeochemistry of the Southern Ocean
401 Integrated analyses of circumpolar Climate and Ecosystem Dynamics in the Southern Ocean (ICED)
402 Response to environmental change in the marine ecosystem
403 Marine biodiversity and adaptation
404 Marine ecosystem function
405 Marine trophic interactions
410 Ecology of krill
411 Ecology of marine mammals
412 Near shore benthic ecosystems
413 Sea-ice zone ecosystems
414 Deep water pelagic ecosystems
415 Fish physiology, evolution and behaviour
420 Evolution and function of Antarctic microorganisms
421 Biodiversity of terrestrial and limnetic ecosystems
422 Terrestrial and limnetic ecosystems: environments and response to change
423 Terrestrial and limnetic ecosystems: life history strategies and performance
424 Variability in terrestrial and inland water ecosystems
430 Environmental impacts, protection and remediation
440 Human health and well-being
510 History, philosophy and education in Antarctic science
520 Strategies for Data Presentation and Management
521 International and National Data Centers: Coordination and Activities
530 Technology
531 GPS Applications and Techniques
610 Magnetosphere/ionosphere/mesosphere coupling
621 Fields and waves
622 Global electric circuit
630 Antarctic astronomy and cosmic ray research

CryoSat replacement mission has been officially approved.

The Cryosat mission lost in the Arctic Ocean last year minutes after launch from northern Russia will fly again. The European Space Agency (ESA) has agreed to build a copy of the original £95m (140m-euro) craft. Early estimates suggest Cryosat-2 could be ready to launch in three years. The mission will study how the Earth's ice sheets are responding to climate change amid mounting evidence that some areas are thinning. For more information see:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4745168.stm
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cryosat/SEM7WFMVGJE_0.html

Unexpected warming in Antarctica

The work of John Turner, using SCAR data shows dramatic increases in air temperature well above the ground over Antarctica. The paper questions the reliability of climate models to predict the future.

Subglacial Antarctic Lake Environments (SALE) - latest developments - March 2006

The SALE community has been busy over the last few months hosting sessions at international meetings, participating in field campaigns, planning for a major workshop in Grenoble, France in April, 2006; setting the agenda for the second SALE meeting, recruiting broader membership to the group, and responding to a variety of press stories on Russian activities at Vostok Station. There were two oral and one poster session at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Meeting in San Francisco in December, 2005 entitled "Icy Lakes" and a SALE poster session is scheduled at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) Meeting in April, 2006. Ninety people have registered for the workshop in Grenoble, France in April, 2006 that will include 29 oral presentations, 35 posters, and discussion groups. The second SCAR SALE two-day meeting will follow the workshop and a full agenda is being developed. The Convener of SALE visited the far east and is actively soliciting nominations for SCAR SALE membership from Asian rim countries including Japan and China. A collaboration of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in and the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, funded by the German Science Foundation DFG, will investigate subglacial lake circulation, salinity changes, frazil ice and clathrate formation. Reports on the Russian activities at Vostok Station have received wide news coverage and has been reported in such disparate press as Aljezeera and the Shanghai Daily. SALE presentations and posters will also be featured at the SCAR Open Science Conference in Hobart in July, 2006 including a plenary presentation by John Priscu.
Further details on these activities can be found at the SALE Program Office (hosted by Texas A&M University)

News from the Antarctic Climate Evolution (ACE) programme

The third ACE special issue was published early in 2006. It is Barrett P., Florindo F. and Cooper A. (Editors) (2006). 'Antarctic Climate Evolution - view from the margin'. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, v 231, p 1-252.
The papers within the issue cover a wide range of techniques and timeframes concerning the evolution of the Antarctic continental margin, ranging from detailed sedimentary analyses of the Cape Roberts Project core to numerical modelling investigations of ice sheet growth and decay.

This special issue presents results from modelling studies and reports on geoscience data aimed at improving our understanding of the behaviour of the Antarctic ice sheet and the climate of the region. This research field is of interest because of the sensitivity of the polar regions to global warming, and because of the influence of the Antarctic ice sheet on global sea level and climate through the Cenozoic Era. The Antarctic ice sheet both responds to and forces changes on global climate and sea level. We need to be aware of the scale and frequency of these changes if we are to understand past patterns of environmental change elsewhere on Earth.
The issue presents new research on the history of the Antarctic ice sheet from Oligocene to recent times, mostly from the Antarctic margin, but with some on the nature of the deep-sea isotope record, and others using recently developed modeling techniques to investigate the influence of atmosphere, ocean and biosphere on past Antarctic climate. This special issue is the third in three years on the theme of Antarctic Climate Evolution.

New results support earlier results from GCM-ice sheet modelling (DeConto and Pollard, 2003a) that plausible changes in atmospheric CO2 levels (from 1120 to 560 ppm) played the primary role in the initiation of the Eocene-Oligocene climate transition.
Work on the apparent problem of late Oligocene warming recognized that the global isotope curve was based on low to mid latitude sites, and that deep-sea sites close to the Antarctic do in fact record high d18O values at that time, consistent with extensive Antarctic ice cover.
New data from the Cape Roberts Project (CRP), which drilled off the Victoria Land coast, shows that Oligocene coastal vegetation was of a cool temperate low woodland type, growing under a mean summer monthly temperature of 4 to 12 ºC, cooler than the temperate Eocene flora, but much warmer than present day climate there.
Glacially induced sea-level variations during the early Miocene (23-16 Ma) are quantified for the first time by applying oxygen isotopes to apparent sea level calibrations to place quantitative constraints on ice-volume changes. High ice volume (50 -125% of the present day East Antarctic Ice Sheet) is inferred from the earliest Miocene until ~17 Ma, when the range reduced to 25-70%. These ice-volume estimates resolve previous discrepancies between stratigraphic data from Antarctica, and interpretations based on non-calibrated isotopic records.
Dramatic cooling and ice advance is recorded at 15 Ma, corresponding to the mid-Miocene cooling that is widespread in deep-sea isotope records. This is the first reported physical record of the mid-Miocene event from the Antarctic continent.

ICESTAR News

The ICESTAR community studies solar-generated events which affect the composition and dynamics of the geospace and of the atmosphere in the terrestrial polar areas. The programme puts special emphasis to the usage of Antarctic observations together with Arctic and satellite data. The research projects in solar terrestrial physics during the year 2005 have resulted in new findings about the interhemispheric relationships in global and mesoscale (10-1000 km) auroral activity. In aeronomy research significant progress has been made in the measurements and theoretical modeling of the lightning associated radio wave activity within the Earth-ionosphere cavity.

Ostgaard et al. (2005a) analyse a time interval when dayside auroras (cusp auroras) were imaged simultaneously in the conjugate hemispheres by UV cameras onboard the IMAGE and Polar satellites. These observations give indisputable evidence on how the solar wind magnetic field (IMF) and the tilt of the Earth's magnetic dipole control the energy and momentum transfer from the solar wind into the Earth's magnetosphere. Under these conditions the cusp spots can appear strongly asymmetric both in longitude and latitude. The longitudinal shift of the cusp aurora is controlled by the east-west component of IMF, while the latitudinal shift is consistent with a dipole tilt effect. These new discoveries, enabled by simultaneous imaging by two different satellites, also demonstrate the potential to examine differences in the energy transfer rates between the solar wind and magnetosphere in the conjugate hemispheres.
In another study Ostgaard et al. (2005b) investigate statistically the onset locations of southern and northern auroral substorms (nightside auroral activity) with the combination of the POLAR and IMAGE satellites. Longitudinal shifts in the onset locations are anticipated especially when IMF has a strong east-west component which partly penetrates into the magnetosphere and causes twist in its nightside tail. The study demonstrates that the widely used empirical models (e.g. Tsyganenko 2002) for the geomagnetic field topology are able to predict the directions of the onset location shifts correctly but their magnitudes in the models are order of magnitude smaller than in the reality.

Sato et al. (2005) investigate the time variation of the conjugacy location with simultaneous all-sky camera (ASC) observations from Iceland and Antactic Syowa station. With the high time and spatial resolution images the location of conjugacy can be pinpointed accurately from the shape of the mesoscale auroras and its position can be followed continuously for a period one hour during which it moved tens of km in latitude and hundreds of km degrees in longitude. Both the studies of Ostgaard et al. and Sato et al. have a clear message for the ICESTAR research community: the concept of nominal magnetic conjugacy relying on statistical models should be interpreted cautiously in interhemispheric comparison studies.

Füllekrug et al. (2005) analyse the appearance of low-frequency (5-100 Hz) radio waves with an impressive data set of more than 50000 lightning discharges. They make the record of finding thirteen resonances in the wave activity and demonstrate that the magnetic field amplitudes at the resonance frequencies follow nicely the theoretical model calculations. Consequently the observed resonance frequencies can be used to determine relative wave propagation velocities in the Earth-ionosphere cavity and to infer a mean global ionospheric conductivity profile. This opens new opportunities for near-real time monitoring of the ionospheric D-layer height variability which will be useful input e.g. for the research of atmospheric response to the bursts of energetic particles of solar origin.

References:
M. Füllekrug, Detection of thirteen resonances of radio waves from particularly intense lightning discharges, Geophys. Res. Lett., 32, L13809, doi: 10.1029/2004GL023028, 2005.
N. Østgaard, S. B. Mende , H. U. Frey , J. B. Sigwarth, Simultaneous imaging of the reconnection spot in the conjugate hemispheres during northward IMF, Highlighted in Geophys. Res. Lett., Vol. 32, No. 21, L21104, doi: 10.1029/2005GL024491, 2005a.
N. Østgaard, N. A. Tsyganenko, S. B. Mende , H. U. Frey , T. J. Immel, M. Fillingim, L. A. Frank, J. B. Sigwarth, Observations and model predictions of substorm auroral asymmetries in the conjugate hemispheres, Geophys. Res. Lett., 32, 5, L05111, doi: 10.1029/2004GL022166, 2005b.
N. Sato, A. Kadokura, Y. Ebihara, H. Deguchi, T. Saemundsson, Tracing geomagnetic conjugate points usince exceptionally similar synchronous auroras, Geohys. Res. Lett., 32, L17109, doi: 10.1029/2004GL023710, 2005.
N. A. Tsyganenko, A model of the near magnetospherewith a dawn-dusk asymmetry: 1. Mathematical structure, J. Geophys. Res., 107(A8), 1179, doi: 10.1029/2001JA000219, 2002.

Use of Google Earth to map Antarctic ice activity

Google Earth data can be used to examine the daily development of the ice cover on Antarctica and in the surrounding Southern Ocean at: http://www.seaice.dk/polarview/google.s/
This tool has been already tested on board of the Norwegian research vessel "Lance" in early December 2005 en route from Cape Town in South Africa to the coast of Dronning Maud Land in Antarctica. It proved invaluable in route planning as the ice conditions were changing rapidly. Daily updates of the information on the sea ice concentration were essential to spare time and fuel on the way to the loading site in the Antarctic.

Successful completion of deep ice coring in the Antarctic

On January 17, 2006 an international team of scientists and technical staff under the leadership of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research has successfully completed the deep ice coring at the Alfred Wegener Institute's Kohnen Station in Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica. Reaching a depth of 2774 metres, first on-site examinations of the ice core indicate that the ice cored at the deepest 200 metres is very old.
The investigations, carried out as part of the EPICA program (European Program for Ice Coring in Antarctica), were designed to gain detailed information about historic climate. Scientists are expecting the data to enhance the understanding of global climate events significantly. A detailed analysis in home laboratories will generate climate data with a very high temporal resolution in the core's upper 2400 metres, covering the last glacial cycle. The cores retrieved from greater depths are presumably up to 900,000 years old. Such insights into the distant climate history of the Antarctic facilitate a deeper understanding of the significance of polar regions for global climate events, both in the past and at present.
Deep ice coring projects represent long-term research programs. Exploratory work for EPICA, to determine a suitable drill site in Dronning Maud Land, began in 1996. It included extensive geophysical and glaciological investigations, both from the air and on the ground, in a previously unexplored region of the Antarctic.
After establishment of the drill site, construction of Kohnen summer station commenced in 1999 at 75°S and 0° 4'E, 2900 metres above sea level. During the final construction stages of the station in 2001, establishment of the drill site had already begun. The deep coring started in 2001/2002, and the core was sunk over four coring seasons. Throughout the entire depth, ice cores of remarkable quality could be retrieved.
Field work in the Antarctic creates not only scientific challenges. The operating conditions for people and technical equipment are extreme: during the summer months of December and January, prevailing temperatures at Kohnen Station range from minus 35°C to minus 20°C, and at the beginning of the current field season in November of 2005, temperatures below minus 50°C were recorded.
The EPICA project is carried out by a consortium of research teams from ten European countries (Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland). EPICA is coordinated by the European Science Foundation (ESF) and financed through national contributions and EU funds. Currently, the lead management rests with Professor Heinrich Miller of the Alfred Wegener Institute. As early as December 2004, the first deep coring of the project, at Dome Concordia Station located on the inland ice plateau of the Eastern Antarctic, was completed five metres above bedrock at a depth of 3270 metres. Hence, after analysis of the core from Kohnen Station, two data sets will be available for comparison, enabling much better interpretation of the records.

Southern Ocean climate linked to Northern Hemisphere (from Marine Scientist, 9 Jan 2006)

Climate changes in the northern and southern hemispheres are linked by a phenomenon by which the oceans react to changes on either side of the planet, according to a study conducted by a research team from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Cardiff University.
They have shown for the first time that ocean circulation in the southern hemisphere has, in the past, adapted to sudden changes in the north. The research will enable more accurate forecasts to be made on how the oceans will react to climate change, said the team.
The scientists have observed that at several periods in history when the temperature increased in the northern hemisphere, the southern hemisphere entered a cooling period, which created a decrease in the amount of deep water transported to the Atlantic Ocean from the south. The opposite effect also took place when the climate cooled in the North Atlantic, the southern hemisphere entered a warmer period, causing water to be transported northwards.
These mechanisms linking the two hemispheres had already been observed in computer climate simulations, but this is the first time they have been confirmed with detailed data obtained from scientific experiments using weather records from the past. This is the first evidence showing that waters in the southern hemisphere play an active role in sudden climate changes

Influence of Space Weather on El-Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO)

O. Troshichev, L. Egorova, and V.Vovk
Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute, St.Petersburg, Russia (olegtro@aari.nw.ru)

It has been shown (Troshichev et al., 2003, 2005; Troshichev and Janzhura, 2004), that the atmospheric perturbations in the Southern winter polar region are closely related to sharp changes in the interplanetary magnetic and electric fields: the large increases of the geo-effective dawn-dusk component of the interplanetary electric field give rise to warming at ground level in Central Antarctica. This warming crucially disturbs the wind regime above the whole of Antarctica. The resulting severe deviations of atmospheric winds from the regular pattern (i.e. anomalous winds) have been examined in relation to strong disturbances in the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF). Statistically significant relationships have been found between the southward IMF and anomalous winds at Antarctic coast stations. The Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) has been used to characterize the phase and intensity of ENSO activity in Western Pacific. Taking into account that the negative SOI values tend to appear and develop particularly during the March-August period, the wind distributions have been analyzed for the Antarctic winter season at a near-pole station (Vostok,) and at stations located in the Western Pacific sector (Russkaya and Leningradskaya). The anomalous winds at these three stations turned out to be observed 1-2 months ahead of the El-Niño event. To check a possible link between El-Niño and Space Weather, the behavior of SOI for 1987-2001 has been compared with the variation of the geomagnetic auroral ejection (AE) index, because the monthly IMF data are incomplete for years preceding 1998. The mean magnetic activity starts to increase 2-3 months before the beginning of El-Niño events, and continues to be high during the next few months. In contrast, in the case of short-term positive or negative deviations of SOI, the magnetic activity does not show noticeable changes before or after the SOI impulses. These results make it possible to conclude that while negative or positive SOI oscillations may occur irrespective of Space Weather, development of El-Niño events is likely influenced by intense and lasting solar wind disturbances, which are accompanied by the development of the anomalous winds flowing from Antarctica toward the North.

ITASE (International Trans Antarctic Scientific Expedition)

A Basis for Understanding Past, Present, and Future Climate Change Over Antarctica and Adjacent Southern Ocean
The International Trans Antarctic Scientific Expedition (ITASE) is a 20-nation continental scale traverse consortium (Fig 1) that is developing a continent-wide array of annually resolved, instrumentally calibrated records of past climate (temperature, net mass balance, atmospheric circulation, chemistry of the atmosphere, and forcing) covering the last 200-1000 years.
Key results emerging from ITASE are as follows.

ITASE map of AntarcticaReconstructed surface temperatures are still within the range of natural variability of the last 200 years, exclusive of the Antarctic Peninsula, and are closely associated with changes in major atmospheric circulation patterns. Major atmospheric circulation features such as the SAM, Amundsen Sea Low, and westerlies are within the range of variability of the last 500 years. A portion of the natural variability in the strength of the westerlies surrounding Antarctica is attributed to decadal and longer scales of solar variability that result in changes in the production of ozone and as a consequence changes in the thermal gradient over Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. Initial phases of the inland migration of marine air masses, perhaps associated with recent ice retreat and warming over the Antarctic Peninsula, can be detected along the Amundsen Sea coast as of the last few decades. Mass balance variability is primarily controlled by surface/bed topography with significant variability in regions displaying large gradients in topography.

Figure 1 - Completed (solid) and planned (dashed) ITASE traverse routes overlaid on Radarsat imagery.
More ITASE information is available from the website: http://www2.umaine.edu/itase/

JARE (Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition) News: A 3029 m deep ice core from Dome Fuji, Antarctica

On 23 January 2006, the Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition (JARE) succeeded in drilling a deep ice core to a depth of 3029 m at Dome Fuji in East Antarctica (77°19'01"S, 39°42'12"E), at a height of 3810 m above sea level. Dome Fuji is the third place where a deep ice core longer than 3000m has been collected in the Antarctic, after Vostok (3623 m in January 1998) and Dome C (3270 m in December 2004). The drilling will continue next season to reach the bedrock, which is estimated to be located 3030 ±15 m below the surface.

Greenhouses Gases affect Antarctic Circumpolar Current

New evidence strengthens case for human-induced greenhouse gases disrupting Antarctic Ocean currents, and reducing the ability of Earth's oceans' to absorb excess carbon dioxide (Posted as an Editors Highlight on the web site of the journal Geophysical Research Letters. To be printed in the March 16 issue).

The Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) is the world's largest and most powerful ocean current. It encircles the Antarctic continent connecting the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans, allowing water, heat, salt and other properties to flow from one to the other. A new Environment Canada study strengthens evidence that changes in the ACC observed since the 1950s may have been the consequence of human activity. Study author John Fyfe and colleague Oleg Saenko both of Environment Canada's Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis analyzed simulations from a large number of global climate models (GCMs) to make the link between increasing anthropogenic carbon dioxide and the apparent strengthening and poleward shift of the ACC in recent decades. Predictions for future indicate the ACC will continue to strengthen and poleward shift. Fyfe and Saenko suggest that these future changes, if they occur, could have important consequences on the uptake of anthropogenic carbon dioxide and hence the ability of the World Ocean to mitigate the global impact of global warming.

Authors: John C. Fyfe and Oleg A. Saenko: Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling
and Analysis, Meteorological Service of Canada, Victoria, B.C., Canada.

Astronomy at Concordia Station

Concordia Station has now commenced its second year of year-round operation. Dr Eric Aristidi is the wintering astronomer, who will conduct "seeing" measurements at optical wavelengths on behalf of the University of Nice. Wide-field sky cameras, developed by Arcetri Observatory and the University of New South Wales, are also in operation through a collaboration with the Italian IRAIT project. The European network ARENA (Antarctic Research; a European Network for Astronomy) came into being on 1 January 2006. ARENA will help to coordinate the development of Antarctic astronomy, especially in Europe.

'Polar Sun Show' a warm up for IPY

The Earth's polar regions are key areas for our climate. A detailed understanding and a comprehensive description of the atmospheric aerosol loading are important prerequisites for future climate predictions. A scientific effort to quantify direct and indirect climate forcing by polar aerosols will be realised through a set of closure experiments using observations in conjunction with model calculation and satellite data.
Establishing a bipolar network (Polar AOD Network) allowed the study of the quantification of aerosol properties (aerosol optical depth and their spectral characteristics) at high latitudes. This also includes information on the seasonal behaviour of the aerosol loading, and the evolutionary patterns of the natural and anthropogenic processes that perturb the aerosol cycles.

A 'Polar Sun Show' was performed from 23 March to 5 April 2006 at the German French AWIPEV base on Spitzbergen, Norway. The research base is operated jointly by the Alfred Wegener Institute and the French polar research institute Paul Emile Victor. Twenty scientists from nine nations participate in this inter-comparison for their spectral radiometers.
The concerted data-recording operation represents essential work towards the assessment of polar air pollution, based on the Polar AOD Network, which will start in the International Polar Year 2007. At that time, the aerosol programme, will measure aerosols to determine pollution levels from 21 involved countries throughout the Arctic and Antarctic.

New Book on Polar Remote Sensing

A new two-volume book, "Polar Remote Sensing," has just been published by Springer Praxis Books:
Volume I: Atmosphere and Oceans
By: Dan Lubin and Robert Massom
ISBN: 3-540-43097-0
Price: $179 USD
Further details are available at:
http://www.springer.com/sgw/cda/frontpage/0,11855,4-10006-22-13886970-0,00.html

Volume II: Ice Sheets
By: Robert Massom and Dan Lubin
ISBN: 3-540-26101-X
Price: $189 USD
Further details are available at:
http://www.springer.com/sgw/cda/frontpage/0,11855,4-10006-22-52121780-0,00.html

News from ATS Secretariat

XXVIII ATCM Final Report

The English version of the Final Report of the XXVIII Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (ATCM) was printed at the end of February 2006. The Antarctic Treaty Secretariat has distributed a print run of 200 copies to more than 50 ATCM Parties, Observers and Experts throughout the world. The report includes all the measures adopted by the ATCM in Stockholm between the 6th and the 17th of June 2005.
This year, the book has 700 pages (almost 18 times more than the Final Report of ATCM I!) and for the first time includes coloured maps and illustrations to make the information more accessible. Additional copies can be ordered here.
The Spanish, Russian and French versions will be available soon. However, all the documents included in the book are available, in the four languages of the Treaty, at the following web address: http://www.ats.aq/28atcm/reportes.php

Forthcoming Events

Events of interest to the SCAR Community are listed at: www.scar.org/events/
Newsletter prepared by Colin Summerhayes and Marzena Kaczmarska, SCAR Secretariat. Please send feedback to info@scar.org