XIV Portuguese Conference on Polar Sciences
Welcome to the XIV Portuguese Conference on Polar Sciences!
The Portuguese Polar Program (PROPOLAR) annually supports the Portuguese Conference on Polar Sciences, for the discussion of ideas and results, identification of new areas of investigation and promotion of collaborations between Portuguese scientists and their international partners. This year the conference takes place in particularly unpredictable times, but which encourage the opportunity to take measures for a more energetically and environmentally sustainable future, based on scientific knowledge. Hence the motto “Fostering polar science on a sustainable planet”, which encompasses the need to seek knowledge to explain past and present processes in polar regions that can project and prevent impacts on these environments and their biomes, and on the future of the global climate.
The XIV Portuguese Conference on Polar Sciences, organized by the Centro de Ciências do Mar do Algarve, will take place at the Penha Campus of the University of Algarve in Faro, on the 18th and 19th of November 2022, in a face-to-face format.
More than ever, we are currently feeling the effects of climate change. In Portugal we are faced with heat waves, low rainfall and extreme drought, and these changes quickly enter everyone's lives. Together with other pressures, this emphasizes the need to change habits, consume less and diversify and favor more environmentally friendly energy sources.
These impacts are global, but with different intensities, and the polar regions are particularly affected. And yet, they are themselves an important climate modulator and contain the largest water reserves on the planet. Successive reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicate that the increase in global temperature will exceed 2ºC soon, while summer temperatures in the Arctic and Antarctic are already rising to previously unthinkable levels, reinforcing that, despite the two poles present very different realities, both are subject to drastic and rapid changes.
The importance of understanding the causes, processes and impacts of these changes is clear. The Portuguese polar scientific community investigates atmospheric, biological, cryospheric, geological and oceanic phenomena that occur in polar regions but have global consequences. Considering the magnitude and diversity of themes and challenges, our dimension and distance to the polar regions, Portugal, through the PROPOLAR) with the support of the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) promotes scientific national and international partnerships, fundamental for consolidating knowledge and anticipating and preventing, or mitigating, future scenarios.
