The Swedish Polar Research Secretariat organized a lecture on 8th October where Dr. Veijo Pohjola, Uppsala University, talked about his IPY research and experiences in Svalbard at the “revived” research station Kinnvika. The research at Kinnvika is multidisciplinary, including glaciology and meteorology etc., and it is mainly focused on Arctic warming and its impact. A book will be published about the station and the whole research programme that occurred during the IPY.

The lecture was held at PUNKTmedis, a department of Medborgarplatsens public library with teenagers as target group. There were 15-20 participants in the lecture and many who stopped to listen briefly while passing by.

The audience asked a lot of questions from the climate change issues to polar bear encounters. Some people posed very thoughtful questions – e.g. about the different factors that may cause global warming and how scientists use different climate history records. This may be a sign that climate research is becoming more common place public knowledge these days.

At least 4 people in the audience were teachers, and for them we had a competition where they had to answer questions about polar research. The prize? A polar scientist-visit to their class room!

The library was very pleased about the activity and is anxious to host another lecture during the upcoming week in March. This might be the beginning of a beautiful cooperative relation! It was also fun to be part of the global IPY-experience.