The general public is familiar with the notion of weather conditions, commonly known as "weather", and weather forecasting on a few days scale. The weather is characterized by several atmospheric parameters of which the best known are the temperature, the wind and the precipitations. The weather can vary greatly from one day to another or from one place to another, even if the two places are close enough. We say that weather is very heterogeneous temporally and spatially.

The climate represents meteorological weather but averaged over long periods, typically at least 10 years. The climate is much less heterogeneous than weather, temporally and spatially. On average, we can see several typical climatic zones, strongly dependent on the sunshine: tropical climates to polar climates and temperate climates to medium latitudes. Meteorological observations and models show that the climate has warmed up over the last 5 decades.

The figure shows an example of atmospheric temperature at the Earth’s surface in January. Temperatures are averaged over the 1959-1997 period. Red areas correspond to a warm climate and blue areas to a cold climate.

Presenter: Slimane Bekki

Did you ever wonder, where different types of rock come from and if they are related? With this lesson you will get a good overview of the rock cycle, and how rocks can be related to each other. This will illustrate how all rocks are connected somehow.

Presenter: Barbara Biskopsto Hansen

Let's talk about biological cycles of toxic substances in the environment. Is eating fish really healthy? What do mosquitos have to do with polar bears? And why was Mad Hatter, a character in "Alice from Wonderland" mad?

Presenter: Anna Wielgopolan

When you live most of your life in icewater, and have the same body temperature as the water and it is also very little food around you, how do you cope...? Learn about the remarkable life of the Arctic charr!

The Arctic Charr lives most of its life in freshwater, but migrate once a year to the sea to get fat. The journey to the sea has to be precisely timed for it to survive. Also, it has to adapt to a very different environment (the sea is approximately 20 times more salty than freshwater). The transition from a freshwater to a saltwater fish, and vice versa, is called anadromy. In this webinar I will tell you about how anadromous fish cope, with focus on the northernmost living freshwater fish, the Arctic charr.

Presenter: Jo Jorem Aarseth

Monitoring of shy and elusive animals, such as the brown bear, is notoriously challenging. In Norway, however, this species is regulary monitored using noninvasive genetic sampling of e.g. their droppings. The DNA contained in the feces - and other samples - is used to identify the number of individuals each year in the country. In this webinar, I will explain the method, show you how valuable this method is to estimate the number of bears in a country, and present to you how bear numbers are changing.

Presenter: Alexander Kopatz

Permafrost is frozen ground which remains frozen for at least two consecutive years. Most of present day permafrost formed during or since the last ice age. On top of the permafrost is a thin layer of soil that thaws each summer and refreezes each winter - the active layer. The term "periglacial" was first used by the Polish geologist Walezy Łoziński in his publication in 1909. Periglacial environments are located where freezing and thawing together with permafrost underneath modify the landscape in a significant manner. The most widespread periglacial landforms are tundra polygons, which are formed by thermal-contraction cracking and divide the ground surface up into polygonal nets. Thawing permafrost has a huge impact on landscapes, topography, local ecosystems and economies.During this lecture students will develop understanding of periglacial landforms and geomorphology. The update geomorhological definitions and terminologies will be supported with photographs of periglacial landforms from different parts of the world.

Presenter: Tomasz Wawrzyniak

In brown bears, males and females behave differently. While males move away from their natal home once they become adults, females continue to stay close to their mothers. This webinar will give a short introduction into the sex-specific differences in brown bears and will then explain how these differences may influence a whole bear population. I will also give an introduction to how we consider these sex-specific differences in scientific research, specifically population and conservation genetic research including a short overview about the results from my own studies in the Scandinavian brown bear population. I will end with a short consideration of what these results may mean for brown bear management.

Presenter: Julia Schregel

Arctic Ocean is cold, inaccessible, plunged into total darkness during the winter and often covered with ice, yet there's an abundance of diverse life. It's a rich and vulnerable ecosystem, where basically all depends on tiniest creatures: plankton.

Explore this tiny and misterious world, and find out:

• What is plankton?
• What’s specific about Arctic plankton?
• How important is it in the ecosystem?
• Can it be used by humans directly?
• Can plankton bloom in the Arctic?
• How does climate change influence plankton?

Presenter: Anna Wielgopolan

Let's go back to the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration! We all know Ernest Shackleton and his fameous expedition on "Endurance" ship, but the history of exploring Antarctica begun in the end of the nineteenth century, when the Belgian Antarctic Expedition on "Belgica" ship reached Antarctic to conquer an unknown land.

That first Antarctic expediton with the international crew on the board was led by Adrien de Gerlache.

What impact did the expedion have on polar research? What did Nansen cat do on the ship? What was the wintering like from the perspective of Roald Amundsen? You will find it out during the classes.

Presenter: Dagmara Bożek-Andryszczak

In the last decade of the 20th century technological progress enabled us to build devices capable of creating digital, three-dimensional models of real objects. This technology, laser scanning, immediately found uses in many fields - including geography. On this lesson you will learn what is LiDAR (that's the abbreviation for laser scanning), understand basics of its operation and see a few of its many applications.

Presenter: Julian Podgórski

Northern lights are a phenomenon that has fascinated people for centuries. Colorful lights illuminating the night sky have already been observed in ancient China or in Greece. It also has many names - officially, from Latin, it is "Aurora", the Roman goddess of dawn, while in Finland, it is known as "Revontulet", which literally means "Fox fires". Aurora is associated with many myths and beliefs around the world ...

Meanwhile, in the 21st century the northern lights are a well-known phenomenon. We can explain the mechanisms that control it. We conduct regular observations and measurements from both the earth and the space. We have mathematical models that help us predict when and where the aurora will appear.

• What is and how is this phenomenon formed?
• What color can it have?
• Where can we see it?
• Does it affect our lives and our health?
• Is it only on Earth?
• What is the Kp index and what the Earth's magnetic field and solar wind has to do with it?

Answers to these and other questions will be revealed during a live lesson broadcasted from Hornsund - Polish Polaris Station on Spitsbergen. We will also learn how the aurora looks like at the station and whether it affects the work of the members of the polar expedition.

Presenter: Anna Nadolna

In 2017 an expedition to the Arctic Ocean confirmed how far plastic pollution has spread. Several pieces of plastics were found. The melting sea ice allows a high level of pollution to float into those vulnerable areas- with alarming effects on the Arctic’s wildlife.

Where does the plastic come from? And how did it come all the way up to the Arctic? How serious is the situation and what can we as individuals do against plastics in the Arctic?

Presenter: Sarah Pӧtter