Do you talk to or interact with the Inuit and Innu that live in the Arctic?

Have you ever seen the smoking hills? What's that like? How about the trees from the eocene on Axel Heiberg?

Please tell him Mickey sent you. Haha. And best of luck to the things I didn’t take hostage.

Ah ok, Kent Driscoll. Unfortunately, I don't know... I did a quick research but I couldn't find anything. Probably, someone will know, let's wait!

I wish I knew Kent’s contacts here. He’s a journalist.

>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?

I don't know if it makes you feel better or worse but a lot of people don't trust medical doctors anymore either

#👍

Do you know Kent in Iqaluit?

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

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.

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 :)

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.

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.

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!

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I live in Iqaluit and have a coworker who is super into ham radio! He really enjoys it and regularly talks to countries all over the world.

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.

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.

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.

I wish I had something interesting to ask, but I have always admired scientists who go so far afield for study!

I suppose I do have a question: is loneliness or homesickness something that factors heavily in the experience? And do they prepare you for that before you go?

Chipping in, this is Stefan. See my post about expedition parrticipation and projects above. As a non-scientist, it is difficult. But in Antarctica, the stations often look for personell to stay in the station for a year. Question is then, are you up for a whole year.

What happens on the ship, stays on the ship...in theory. But befriend a polar scientist and they all have one or the other story about some people that ended up in naughty situations. In Norway, this is a bit calmed down, because the ships are dry (no alcohol). German ships are a bit different and I hear stories that french ships are really good for having a little glass or two.

When it comes to land based expeditions, Svalbard was mentioned, but there you are in a village (usually) and go out. So this is not as much of a social experiment. The other side is different. In Antarctica you are in stations with some people and it is similar to boats. I can recommend chilean bases, as they have pretty good BBQs. During my time at Statione Prat we also had a folklore evening, some banquetts, and even the first Antarctic olympic games. It was basically Chile vs. Ecuador, but it was fun to play soccer so far South.

I’d love to explore datasets about the ecology and life in polar areas, especially of extremophiles. They’re so fascinating. What are some data sources/tutorials you’d recommend looking into for interested newbies outside of the field? And what kinds of questions can be asked/answered with these datasets?

Very cool. Thank you.

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