At the request of the 10 parties negotiating on an agreement to prevent unregulated commercial fishing in the High Seas portion of the Central Arctic Ocean, participants at the meeting were tasked with addressing four Terms of Reference, summarized below:
1. Design a 1 ‐ 3 year long mapping program.
2. Design a monitoring program.
3. Identify human, financial, vessel/equipment resources needed for mapping and monitoring.
4. Develop data collection, sharing, and hosting protocols that outline the details of what and how data shall be collected, shared, and hosted for  consideration by the Parties.

Peter Pulsifer, chair of the Arctic Data Committee (ADC) has presented SAON and ADC work at the meeting.The full report is available here: https://www.afsc.noaa.gov/Arctic_fish_stocks_fifth_meeting/pdfs/Final_report_of_the_5th_FiSCAO_meeting.pdf

The application deadline is 15th September 2018 at 16:00 CEST: https://sios-svalbard.org/AccessCall2018

INTAROS has circulated this invitation:

I am now pleased to announce the opening of the INTAROS questionnaire to the external collaborators! You can access it through the INTAROS web page (www.intaros.eu).

This survey addresses Arctic in-situ observations of the ocean, atmosphere, terrestrial sphere and cryosphere, retrieved through established networks/observing systems as well as individual large projects.

Scope of the survey
To collect the information needed to assess the existing Arctic in-situ observing systems in terms of data delivery chain, accessibility, and spatial-temporal coverage.

Why is important?
The repository of the answers will enhance the visibility of the assessed data, and will facilitate data discovery for stakeholders and data users.

Roberta Pirazzini
PhD, Scientist
Meteorological Research Unit
Finnish Meteorological Institute
P.O. Box 503
FI-00101 Helsinki, Finland

Call for Community Input Arctic Observing Summit 2018

Deadline: 15 February

The Executive Organizing Committee for the Arctic Observing Summit 2018 is seeking input on the topics under discussion at the Summit in the form of brief statements. More details on the AOS process and specific guidance on input sought are provided below. The theme for the Summit is The Business Case for a pan-Arctic Observing System.

The Arctic Observing Summit is a biennial summit that aims to provide community-driven guidance for the design, implementation, coordination, and sustained operation of an international network of Arctic observing systems. The AOS provides a platform to address urgent and broadly recognized needs of Arctic observing across all components of the Arctic system. The AOS 2018 will focus on pressing issues in the implementation and support of sustained observations that can be addressed through a business-case lens.

Community input can highlight important data, management, or logistical needs or gaps, explore emerging opportunities, address a current challenge, present new initiatives or technology that can contribute to Arctic observing (including global programs), or review on-going observing activities or issues that are relevant for the development, application, operation, or support of a sustained Arctic observing network.

For more detailed information on themes and submissions, please visit the AOS website. Instructions for short submissions are available here.

P.S. Early-bird registration and accommodation are open for Polar2018!

The Strategy for SAON was approved January 2018

During the meeting, it was agreed to establish a working group focused on enabling federated search between and among polar data centers and catalogues.  This would build on the Arctic Data Committee's "Metadata Elements" initiative, work that SCADM has done for many years, and would be very relevant to the emerging GEO Community Portal. During that meeting it was mentioned that Halldór Jóhannssonn and his team at Arctic Portal may be able contribute significant resources towards this effort.  Halldór has confirmed the availability of these resources in the form of a new postdoc who has recently joined their team. 

A preliminary meeting of the joint ADC-IARPC Vocabularies and Semantic working group  (https://arcticdc.org/activities/core-projects/vocabularies-and-semantics-wg) will be held on October 17th at 14:00 EST.  This group is open to all and is in its formative stage, all are encouraged to join. Please contact group co-leads Øystein Godøy () or Ruth Duerr (). 

Detailed minutes will be available here.