Dramatic and manyfold news of changes in the Arctic (destruction of permafrost landscapes, shrinkage and thinning of the Arctic sea ice cover, reduction of the Greenland ice sheet) make us wonder what all of this will mean for the world. The presently ongoing International Polar Year offers a unique chance to assess the modern processes which alter marine and terrestrial environments in the Arctic and which control the quality of life of Arctic indigenous and non-indigenous populations. New coring records demonstrate that the Arctic was ice-free during the Early Tertiary, but that during mid-Tertiary it had cooled enough to acquire its first ice covers.
The Pleistocene ice cores from Greenland have demonstrated fast and dramatic changes of the atmospheric circulation over the Arctic whose imprint have also been traced in oceanic and terrestrial paleoclimate records from low latitudes. Only the ongoing warm climatic phase (the Holocene) seems to have been relatively stable.
Modelling Arctic climates and ocean environments suggests the complete dissappearance of the Arctic sea ice cover over the coming century. Hence questions are asked what is in store for the future, for the entire Arctic and its people, its lands and seas, as well as for the entire world. And the conference will assess if credible answers can be found.