Organized by

Symposium Organizing Committee
Subcommittee for International Affairs, Committee on Earth and Planetary
Sciences of the Science Council of Japan(TBD)
Informal Subcommittee on IGBP and WCRP, Committees on Environmental Sciences
/ Earth and Planetary Sciences of the Science Council of Japan(TBD)

Supported by

National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR)
Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC)(TBD)
Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
International Arctic Research Center (IARC)(TBD)
National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (MIRAIKAN)(TBD)

Background of the New Symposium

The Arctic and surrounding region of sub-arctic is one key area for the
study of global change because the anthropogenic impact is projected to
be the largest in this area due to the complicated feedback processes
of the nature. This Arctic Region is under-going strong changes in the
recent years during the global warming. A number of international and
interdisciplinary research projects are in progress for the studies on
the atmosphere-ocean-land system of Arctic, one of such is the
world-wide project of the International Polar Year (IPY) during 2007 to
2009. In order to understand the feedback processes, in which various
components are interacting in the Arctic and Sub-arctic, and to project
the global warming in the future, we need to exchange more knowledge
and information than ever by combining the different scientific
communities under the common interest of the Arctic region. We predict
that the science in the Arctic region draws increasingly more attention
in near future, and the proposed symposium would serve as the first
step for that goal.

Several research groups located in Japan discussed the necessity of such integrated Symposium and a new "International Symposium on the Arctic Research"
will be initiated under the auspices of the IASC and CliC Subcommittee
of the Science Council of Japan, with support of several Institutes and
Agencies. This Symposium is planned to be held every 2-years, and the
first Symposium will be held in November, 2008 in Tokyo, Japan.

Direction and Outline of the Symposium

The followings will be the general topic of discussion.

(1) Changes of the Arctic climate and sub-systems.
(2) Extensive process studies on the atmosphere-ocean-land system in the Arctic
(3) Feedback embedded in the sub-systems in the Arctic
(4) Impact and feedback between the Arctic and global climate
(5) Global and regional modeling with the focus on the Arctic
(6) Influence of Arctic to the Asian climate.

The area of discipline ranges from Climatology, Atmospheric Science,
Oceanography, Cryosphere Science, Biological Science, and Hydrology.
General Sessions, and Special Sessions will be provided.

Sessions

The following general session will be provided. The Symposium language will be in English.

(1) Atmospheric Science

(2) Ocean and Sea Ice
(3) Hydrology, Permafrost and Snow cover
(4) Ice Sheets and Glaciers
(5) Terrestrial Ecosystem and greenhouse gas
(6) Marine Ecosystem.
(7) Integrated Modeling Studies

The following special session is planned

(1) The latest update from the IPY (International Polar Year) Projects
(2) Arctic climate change under the global warming
(3) AFoPS (Asian Forum for Polar Sciences) Cooperative Research Network for Polar Climate Change Study