During Hanover's own winter-end change of climate, scientists were dealing with climate change on a grander level at Dartmouth, as from March 14-20, the College hosted the first Arctic Science Summit Week ever to be held in the United States.
"[The summit] was a major event for Arctic science and holding it at Dartmouth was a recognition of the strong role Dartmouth plays in dealing with climate change," said former ambassador Kenneth Yalowitz, director of the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding.
Environmental studies professor Ross Virginia, who leads the Institute of Arctic Studies within the Dickey Center, was the principal organizer of the week-long conference. Virginia said that the summit was designed to bring together scientific leaders from Arctic regions and elsewhere in order to coordinate large-scale research.
"Climate change was one of the principal themes that ran through the event," Virginia said. "I think that everyone involved in polar science knows that both the Arctic and the Antarctic systems are changing rapidly and even more rapidly than many had predicted."
The Arctic Science Summit Week began the fourth International Polar Year.
The first IPY was held in 1882, with an aim to draw attention to polar issues. The last IPY, held in 1957, resulted in the building of the McMurdo Base in Antarctica.
"[The building of the base] really changed the infrastructure and funding of polar science," Virginia said.
Yalowitz noted that Director of the National Science Foundation Arden Bement's presence as keynote speaker for the opening of the conference was indicative of the importance of Arctic Science.Virginia said the significance of the issue of climate change is one that everyone is beginning to recognize,
"The Arctic is like a canary in a coal mine, and if something goes wrong, that's a warning signal for the earth," Yalowitz said. "We're getting that warning signal now, and I think that was the importance of the meeting."
Yalowitz believes that an interdisciplinary approach is one that Dartmouth can facilitate in the future by fostering both its method of problem solving and by creating dialogue between scientists, policy makers and native peoples.
The conference largely represented the research science community, but also aimed to ensure that indigenous people of the north -- those who are heavily experiencing the impact of climate change -- are fully involved in all science decisions.
"A meeting like this gets people together and puts research side by side and makes decisions about what the next steps are to get the critical knowledge that we need," Virginia said.
The summit opened with a panel which examined various policy options and perspectives on climate change. Minnie Grey, an Inuit leader from northern Quebec and one of the leaders of the Makavik Corporation -- an organization that invests in civic service projects and community-based activities -- was one of the key speakers, Virginia said.
Virginia said that Grey was able to "put an Inuit face on the problem and, more specifically, how it's affecting her community,"
The event was co-hosted by the Dickey Center and its Institute of Arctic Studies, along with the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center's Cold Regions Research and Engineering Lab.
