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The time has finally arrived! The 2020-2021 Antarctic season upon us!

The BELARE (Belgian Antarctic Research Expedition) team arrived in Cape Town, South Africa at the beginning of November, where they are currently spending two weeks in quarantine before being allowed to journey to the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica (PEA) Research Station, where a shortened  2020 - 2021 season with a reduced team will take place.

As the ill-fated year 2020 rolls to an end, the new Antarctic Season begins for the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica Research Station.

Before the closure of Princess Elisabeth Antarctica (PEA) Station for overwintering, it was crucial for the BELARE team to complete the construction of the station’s new garage, located in the station’s north annex.

After many interesting editions over the last decade, it is with extreme pleasure that the International Polar Foundation and its many partners from the Arctic community wish to invite Arctic stakeholders and members of the general public to the 11th edition of the Arctic Futures Symposium.

Hendrik Huwald is a scientist at the Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences (CRYOS) and a lecturer at the Environmental Sciences and Engineering Section at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). He developed a numerical model for sea ice and studied energy transfer processes in the Arctic at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETHZ), and in the Alps at the former Environmental Fluid Mechanics laboratory of EPFL. In 2013, he joined the newly founded CRYOS laboratory, where he conducted research in the domains of snow science, hydrology, boundary layer meteorology, and environmental sensing. He has spent several seasons conducting research at the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica station, studying snow deposition and surface mass balance.

Stefania Gili is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Laboratoire G-Time (Geochemistry: Isotope, Mineral and Element Tracing) at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB, Belgium). Stefania was selected in 2018 for a postdoctoral fellowship to take part in the CHASE (Chemical Characterization of the airborne particles in the Dronning Maud Land area: from the atmosphere to the surface snow) research project funded by the Belgian Federal Science Policy (BELSPO), as part of the BRAIN-be (Belgian Research Action through Interdisciplinary Networks) program.

The International Polar Foundation was deeply saddened to hear of the fatal accident in Greenland that befell Prof. Konrad “Koni” Steffen. Prof. Steffen had been in the north of Greenland conducting field research at Swiss Camp (a meteorological research station he established in the ‘90s) when he passed away on Saturday, August 8th.

Frank Pattyn in a Belgian glaciologist and ice sheet modeller. He is the director of the Laboratoire de Glaciologie at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB). Professor Pattyn has developed many ice sheet models, such as the Blatter-Pattyn model (a three-dimensional thermomechanical ice sheet model including higher-order stress gradients) and more recently the fast Elementary Thermomechanical Ice Sheet model (f.ETISh). These models simulate the behaviour of ice sheets and ice shelves, and allow for projecting future mass changes of ice sheets.

Thanks to a recent decision by the Greenland Place Names Committee, a previously unnamed glacier in Greenland now bears the name of world-renowned Swiss glaciologist Professor Konrad “Koni” Steffen.  Koni was also an Honorary Member of IPF, and served on the Baillet Latour Antarctica Fellowship Committee. Professor Steffen passed away in August 2020 while on a research mission to Swiss Camp, which is situated upstream from the Jakobshaven Glacier in Greenland.

Dr Alexander Mangold is a researcher who has been working with the Observations Department at the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium (KMI-IRM) since 2005. He manages the institute’s research on aerosols, UV and ozone at the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica (PEA) Research Station. He has participated in numerous scientific expeditions to the station in Antarctica.

The last projects he has been involved with include AEROCLOUD (a collaboration between KU Leuven, the Belgian Royal Meteorological Institute (KMI-IRM0 and the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRA-IASB), CHASE (in partnership with Ghent University and the Université Libre de Bruxelles ULB)) and ACME (a collaboration between the Belgian Royal Meteorological Institute (KMI-IRM), the International Polar Foundation, and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest Snow and Landscape Research (WSL)).