Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme - AMAP

05/06/2026

🌍 Happy !

This year's call, Inspired by Nature. For Climate. For Our Future.
This couldn't be more urgent in the Arctic. The region is warming more than three times faster than the global average, and what happens in the North shapes the climate, oceans and weather of the entire planet.

At AAMAP, our experts track the pollutants and climate shifts reshaping the Arctic, turning monitoring into the evidence policymakers need to act.

📖 Read our latest publications on climate, plastics, and black carbon link in comments!

Monitoring the Arctic is acting for the climate ❄️

22/05/2026

Since 1979, the Arctic has been warming more than three times faster than the global average, and the latest evidence shows its ecosystems are now reshaping the global climate system itself.

Today we're sharing a major new compilation from AMAP and Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna Working Groups of the Arctic Council: 11 peer-reviewed reviews and an editorial synthesis, published as a Special Issue in Frontiers in Environmental Science, with contributions from 113 scientists across the Arctic research community.

A few headline findings:
• In the Arctic Ocean, net primary production rose 57% between 1998 and 2018, and sea-ice loss is fuelling marine heatwaves, shifting species northward ("borealization"), and disrupting food webs that Indigenous and coastal communities depend on.

• On land, the tundra has gradually become greener over the past 40 years, yet thawing permafrost, shifting hydrology, and intensifying wildland fires (the unprecedented 2023 wildland fire season was the first summer global temperatures exceeded +1.5°C above pre-industrial levels), are changing the carbon balance of these landscapes.

• Across the Arctic-Boreal region, methane from wetlands, dust from newly exposed land, and carbon released by degraded ecosystems are feeding back into the global climate — and many of these systems are at or approaching tipping points beyond which change becomes irreversible.

The compilation is clear about what is needed now: coordinated pan-Arctic monitoring, ecosystem-based management, and policy-relevant pathways co-developed with Indigenous Kknowledge Hholders.

This work was edited by Torben R. Christensen (Aarhus University), Per Fauchald (UiT The Arctic University of Norway) and Marie Frost Arndal (Aarhus University), with editorial synthesis co-authored by Tom Christensen, and was supported by AMAP/CAFF support funds from the Danish Ministry of Climate, Energy and Utilities.

📖 Open-access compilation:https://g-e-m.dk/fileadmin/g-e-m/GEM/ebook_Frontiers.pdf
Link to graphics here: https://geo.abds.is/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search #/search?query_string=%7B%22cat%22:%7B%22Climate%20Feedbacks%20CAFF%2FAMAP%22:true%7D%7D&from=1&to=30

28/04/2026

Dear all,

The EU-funded project ArcSolution continues its webinar series on Pollution and One Health in the Arctic.

We are pleased to invite you to our upcoming webinar, titled: “Plastic pollution in the marine environment of the Arctic”

The webinar will take place on Thursday 7 May 2026, from 15:00 – 16:00 CET.

This session will focus on plastic pollution in the marine environment of the Arctic, including approaches to preventing marine litter and solutions for addressing lost fishing nets.

Programme:
🔹 Julia Olsen – Preventing marine litter in the European Arctic: practices, institutions and infrastructure
🔹 Roger Larsen – Making lost fishing nets disappear: The DSolve project
🔹 Moderator: Pál Weihe

👉 Register here to receive the Teams link: b3a63e07-5b00-4df4-aac5-996cfc8c49a6@e85164ec-9598-49a2-98a1-709a3f29cfc6" rel="ugc" target="_blank">https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/b3a63e07-5b00-4df4-aac5-996cfc8c49a6@e85164ec-9598-49a2-98a1-709a3f29cfc6

We look forward to welcoming you to the webinar!

Best,
The ArcSolution Team

22/04/2026

Happy Earth Day 🌍

A year ago, AMAP - The Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme and the Arctic Council brought together a remarkable group of young people for an Arctic Youth Expedition. They skied, they camped, they listened. They learned from the land, from the Sámi communities who welcomed them, and from each other.

This week, five of them were asked a simple question: what would you want to share on Earth Day?

Their answers are in the images below.

We spend too much time talking about youth, and not enough time listening to them. They are not the leaders of tomorrow — they are already leading. They see what is happening at the edges of the world. They carry it with them. And they are telling us, clearly, what is at stake and what is still possible.

This Earth Day, their voices are the ones to amplify. May they move you the way they have moved so many — to keep going, to stay on track, and to remember that the time to act is not someday. It is now.

With deep gratitude to Sian Shields, Malou Platou Johansen, Daniel King, Tarjei Westerlund, and Mackenzie Porter, and to every young person whose voice still hasn't been heard.

20/04/2026

We are thrilled to announce that our colleague Gosia Smieszek-Rice, PhD, AMAP Deputy Secretary and Research Fellow at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, is now an Affiliate of the Arctic Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs! 🎉

Launched in 2017, the Arctic Initiative brings interdisciplinary, evidence-based analysis to the Arctic's most pressing challenges, from community resilience and permafrost thaw to ocean governance and Arctic cooperation among nations. It is exactly the kind of science-policy platform where Gosia's expertise in Arctic governance, science diplomacy, and the science-policy interface makes a natural and powerful fit.

We are proud to see her work recognised at this level, and look forward to the contributions and collaborations this affiliation will bring, for AMAP and for the broader Arctic community.

Congratulations Gosia!

🔗 Learn more about the Arctic Initiative:

Photo Credit Toggle Adobe Stock/Mikael Project Arctic Initiative LinkedIn Leadership John P. Holdren Co-Chair Henry Lee Co-Chair Jennifer Spence Director Programs Arctic Initiative Experts Research Events Student Opportunities The Latest Get the most recent news and insights from our Arctic experts....

16/04/2026

14/04/2026

A new AMAP technical report on the effects of plastic pollution on Arctic biota shows that plastics affect Arctic animals in many ways, and that major data gaps remain.

The technical report Effects of Plastic Pollution on Arctic Biota, conducted between 2021 and 2025 by an international group of experts under the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP), summarizes the state of knowledge on negative biological effects of plastic litter and microplastic particles on Arctic animals and analyzes the current gaps in our knowledge in this field.

The report was co-led by Jennifer Provencher (National Wildlife Research Centre, Environment and Climate Change Canada) and Eivind Farmen (Norwegian Environment Agency), with contributions from more than 20 scientists across Canada, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, China, and the United States.

The report concludes:
🐦 Plastics affect Arctic animals in many ways: from entanglement in fishing gear to internal damage from swallowing plastic. These impacts can make animals more vulnerable to other threats, such as climate change and disease.

🔬 For many species, we simply do not have the data required to assess effects at the population level. More coordinated research and monitoring is needed.

🧪 Despite a growing body of research on chemical additives in plastics, no information was available on their effects on Arctic species, a significant gap that this report calls on the scientific community to address.

🗒️ Effect studies and studies on the movement of plastic particles from the digestive tract to tissue are lacking, making it currently impossible to identify indicator species.

-> The report recommends harmonized and interoperable databases for entanglement and ingestion, community-based studies drawing on subsistence hunts, and controlled exposure studies using environmentally relevant concentrations of microplastics.

🔗 Read the full report: https://lnkd.in/e6gvjXSj

Have questions about the report? Drop them in the comments below.
Photo: Geir Gotaas / Norwegian Polar Institute.

10/04/2026

ArcSolution Webinar: Complex Exposure Situations in the Arctic – PFAS Add to Legacy POPs

Dear all,

The EU-funded project ArcSolution continues its webinar series on Pollution and One Health in the Arctic.

We are pleased to invite you to our upcoming webinar, titled: “Complex Exposure Situations in the Arctic: PFAS Add to Legacy POPs”

The webinar will take place on Thursday 16 April 2026, from 15:00 – 16:00 CET.

This session will focus on complex exposure situations in the Arctic, with particular attention to how PFAS compounds add to the burden of legacy persistent organic pollutants (POPs).

Programme:
🔹 Pál Weihe – The Faroese experience: Vaccinations under pressure
🔹 Christian Sonne – High PFAS exposure in East Greenland
🔹 Moderator: Arja Rautio

👉 Register here to receive the Teams link: 6437b5b4-f25e-4183-8ac2-76cd541d505f@e85164ec-9598-49a2-98a1-709a3f29cfc6" rel="ugc" target="_blank">https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/6437b5b4-f25e-4183-8ac2-76cd541d505f@e85164ec-9598-49a2-98a1-709a3f29cfc6

We look forward to welcoming you to the webinar!

Best,
The ArcSolution Team

24/03/2026

The Registry of Polar Observing Networks (RoPON), is now available, making information about high-latitude scientific observation and monitoring more findable and accessible. RoPON is a catalog of systems and related organizations that coordinate or track observing activities & infrastructure across the Arctic, Antarctic, and Southern Oceans.

Visit RoPON at https://polarobservingregistry.org/

21/03/2026

🧊 Today is World Glacier Day — and the science couldn't be clearer.

According to the AMAP Arctic Climate Change Update 2024, the rates of Arctic glacier ice loss have increased in all regions and in every successive decade since the 1970s — with Greenland, Alaska, and Arctic Canada driving the largest contributions to rising seas worldwide.

The International Year of Glacier Preservation, led by UNESCO and the World Meteorological Organization, has come to a close. But the work is far from over. A new Decade of Action for Cryospheric Sciences is starting, with UNESCO taking the lead. From monitoring to action, this decade calls on the entire polar community to come together around what the science is showing us.

Glaciers are not just indicators of climate change — they are lifelines for billions of people. Let's act accordingly. 🌍

📄 Source: AMAP Arctic Climate Change Update 2024: Key Trends and Impacts: https://www.amap.no/documents/doc/arctic-climate-change-update-2024-key-trends-and-impacts.-summary-for-policy-makers/3847