Arctic Ocean drilling workshop in Nov.

A workshop to be held Nov. 3 to 5 in Bremerhaven, Germany, will bring together scientists interested in future drilling expeditions in the Arctic Ocean. Funded by the Consortium for Ocean Leadership, the European Science Foundation, the Arctic Ocean Science Board and the Nansen Arctic Drilling Program, the workshop is titled “Arctic Ocean History, From Speculation to Reality.” The overall goal of the workshop is to enable collaboration in planning and site surveying for Integrated Ocean Drilling Program drilling in the Arctic Ocean.

The workshop organizers say that drilling on the Lomonosov Ridge in the summer of 2004 under the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program revealed invaluable new information about the Arctic, including new insights into the sensitivity and response of the high latitudes to greenhouse gases. But the geologic history of the Arctic Ocean remains substantially unknown, they say.

The workshop will help scientists build a drilling program that will target evidence relating to issues such as the history of the formation of the Arctic Ocean; the composition of the Alpha-Mendeleev Ridge; the opening of gateways and exchange of water between the Arctic Ocean and other oceans; and the role of the Arctic in transitioning between greenhouse and icehouse climatic conditions.

Applications to attend the workshop are due by Aug. 24. Further information is available at www.oceanleadership.org/usssp/workshops/arctic. Or contact Bernard Coakley ([email protected]) or Ruediger Stein ([email protected]).

—Alan Bailey