In 2025, the EU will set up a new polar research body that will operate from Sweden, while scientists drill deep into polar ice to study the Earth’s climate history and help mitigate the effects of climate change on this fragile ecosystem.
German scientist Dr Nicole Biebow is keenly aware of how important it is to research and protect the Earth’s increasingly fragile polar regions.
The two poles are warming faster than any other area on the planet and are losing ice through increased melting. The Arctic, for example, is warming three times as fast as the global average, according to polar scientists. This affects local communities and wildlife, but also has broad socio-economic and climate impacts that extend across the globe, like rising sea levels.
“We always say that the poles are the canary in the coal mine,” said Biebow, the project coordinator of an EU-funded project named EU-PolarNet 2, which concluded in December 2024.
Biebow is the head of the international cooperation unit at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany and also a former chair of the European Polar Board (EPB). The EPB is an independent group of research institutes, funding agencies and ministries set up to advance the coordination of European polar research both in the Arctic and Antarctic.
The EPB and another key polar research body, the European Polar Coordination Office (EPCO), will be operating out of Sweden’s far north from 2025. This reflects Europe’s determination to be the leading voice in studying these high-latitude regions.
EU-PolarNet 2 carried out much of the work to establish the EPCO, which will start work in January 2025, hosted by the Arctic Centre at Umeå University, Sweden.