Glaciers were once thought to be inert environments, too cold for biology or for chemical reactions to occur. It’s only in the last two decades that we’ve discovered that glacial environments are “hot spots” for biogeochemical processes that release biologically important elements. As glaciers flow, they crush the underlying rock into very fine “glacial flour”. When this material reacts with water flowing beneath glaciers and ice sheets, the unusual chemical conditions allow new, solid materials to form. These very fine particles are highly reactive and can release elements and compounds into the environment. Furthermore, we’re only just beginning to unpick the rich microbial processes that drive further reactions in these subglacial environments. The diversity of microbes on, in and under glaciers has even led one scientist suggesting “glacial flour” should really be “glacial sourdough”!

Kate Hendry (BAS) and colleagues from around the world, led by Jon Hawkings (UPenn) and including BIOPOLE partners, published a review of these incredibly important and sensitive environments. The review documents the web of biogeochemical reactions around glaciers, in proglacial environments, and across the land-ocean continuum. The authors conclude that it’s more important than ever that we understand the drivers behind these reactions. Glacial flour is an important source of critical nutrients for coastal marine environments and has attracted substantial interest as a fertiliser for crops and for carbon dioxide removal via enhanced rock weathering. However, glacial flour supply also has potential negative consequences for downstream plankton through changes in water quality and the release of toxic metals. Given glaciers are retreating at an accelerating pace, we need to understand the drivers behind these ecosystem impacts, and the knock-on effects for society, to be able to predict – and mitigate against – future challenges.

Hawkings, J. R., Bradley, J. A., Doting, E. L., Hassan, N., Hendry, K. R., Holt, A. D., … & Bhatia, M. P. (2025). Glacier biogeochemical cycling and downstream impacts. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, 1-20.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-025-00751-1

The authors dedicated this review to the memory of Maya Bhatia. “Maya died unexpectedly during the writing of this review, and we are profoundly indebted to her input in conceiving the manuscript and to the scientific discipline at large. Maya made key contributions to our understanding of glacier biogeochemistry that are described in the article, particularly in framing the importance of glaciers and ice sheets in wider biogeochemical cycles, without which the field would be in a far more premature position. Maya was an outstanding person, scientist, colleague and friend, and is sorely missed.”

The Author of this Article Kate Hendry (British Antarctic Survey)

Ocean Sciences Meeting 2026 (OSM26) stood out for its impressive scale and the breadth of topics covered, spanning diverse scientific disciplines, technologies, and infrastructures, including highly specialised niche areas. Despite this diversity, a unifying tread was woven throughout the meeting: the central role of open data. Across sessions, it became clear that progress in all these areas is strongly enabled by transparent, accessible data sharing. OSM26 featured numerous contributions highlighting this need, a few of which are outlined below.

The GOOS Observations Coordination Group showcased how interconnected regional data services, supported by standardised minimum metadata requirements, are essential for ensuring the long-term traceability of ocean observations. The Digital Twins of the Ocean session illustrated how integrating observations, models, and machine learning can deepen understanding of ocean variability, while simultaneously incentivising researchers to share their data in support of these advances. The BIO-GO-SHIP team was recognised for its efforts in delivering sustained, open-access biological data from the open ocean.

In addition, the American Geophysical Union hosted a well-attended session on technical skills for publishing data and code, reflecting strong interest from researchers eager to develop competencies that will benefit them throughout their careers. Finally, the Southern Ocean Observing System organised a session on open science and data in polar research. This session highlighted persistent challenges in data sharing, but also revealed an encouraging cultural shift: many participants viewed the publication of research data as being at least as important as the publication of scientific articles.

The Author of this Article Petra ten Hoopen (British Antarctic Survey)

Although the UK is not an Arctic state, it has strong and long-standing connections to the Arctic region. Changes in the Arctic Ocean are already affecting the UK through global sea-level rise, shifts in climate and weather patterns, and impacts on ecosystem services. Recognising this importance, the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) hosted a workshop in June 2025 on the contribution of UK Arctic Ocean science to the 5th International Polar Year (IPY 2032/33).

The workshop aimed to identify priority Arctic research questions for the coming years and to highlight the unique strengths and technologies the UK can offer the international community. More than 50 scientists from 26 higher-education, research, and non-profit organisations took part over one and a half days, both in person and online. BIOPOLE was well represented by Geraint Tarling, Clara Manno, Adrian Martin, Stefanie Rynders, Yevgeny Aksenov, Peter Brown, Dan Mayor, Mar Benavides, and Elena Garcia-Martin.

The meeting opened with presentations from James Jansen (FCDO) and Henry Burgess (NERC Arctic Office), who highlighted the importance of UK Arctic science and outlined the 5th International Polar Year. Jeremy Wilkinson (BAS) then reviewed existing international Arctic observing networks, followed by a joint presentation from Matt Spencer and Ale Vergara-Peña (WWF-UK) on the WWF Global Arctic Programme. Jessica Surma (UKRI) concluded the session with an overview of current NERC funding for Arctic research.

Participants then discussed six high-level research themes, including Arctic Ocean climate, ecosystems and biodiversity, global impacts, hazards and resilience, human impacts, and socio-economic change. These sessions were highly interactive, with colourful yellow post it notes rapidly filling the theme charts. The brainstorming proved extremely productive, as reflected in the crowded flip charts and lively discussions.

The second day focused on developing the scientific and innovation framework for each priority research question. While much of the document was drafted during the workshop, participants contributed further input afterwards to finalise the report, which is available here.

The Author of this Article Elena García-Martín (National Oceanography centre)

Many BIOPOLE members are continuing to build on the programme’s success through major international initiatives such as Antarctica In Sync and the 5th International Polar Year (IPY). They have helped shape the future of polar science by contributing to white papers and leading or participating in national and international committees, working  groups and task forces, ensuring that BIOPOLE’s legacy continues to have a lasting impact. BIOPOLE researchers and partners have also secured 9M Euros in EU funding through the new SYNCHRONY programme which begins in Aug 2026. SYNCHRONY will utilise BIOPOLE data and help establish a coordinated standardised framework for collecting and sharing observations across the polar regions, supporting initiatives such as Antarctica InSync and IPY. In addition, BIOPOLE researchers have recently completed the EU-funded PolarRES programme, which developed advanced high resolution polar climate models to better understand (among other aspects) how climate change may impact Antarctic ecosystems. This work included studying the impacts on the diapausing copepod C. acutus  in collaboration with BIOPOLE.  Building on this success, BIOPOLE researchers have secured a further 9M Euros of EU funding through the new SnowPI programme. SnowPI will extend BIOPOLE’s research into how future climate change may alter the movement of nutrients from land into the polar oceans, and how these changes could affect marine ecosystems, carbon storage, and global nutrient and carbon cycles by using the latest set of climate models that include inland ice and snow processes. 

The Author of this Article Geraint Tarling (British Antarctic Survey) and Nadine Johnston (BAS)

As we are now in the final year of our project our focus naturally turns to completing our remaining deliverables and finalising publications.  While this is a critical phase it is equally important that we prioritise how we will secure and sustain the long-term legacy of BIOPOLE.  

Ensuring that the impact of our work continues beyond the project’s end should now be a shared priority. This includes maintaining visibility of our outputs, supporting ongoing collaborations, and identifying opportunities to extend or build upon our achievements. 

As such we have identified a number of BIOPOLE Legacy Task Forces that require input from all sectors of our Community (including Members, Science Partners and Strategic Partners). These include: 

1. Final Science Meeting Task Force 

2. Final Key Messages Task Force 

3. Synthesis Papers Task Force 

4. Input to Policy Task Force 

5. International initiatives and Networks Task Force 

6. Dissemination Task Force 

7. ECR Task Force 

8. A Royal Society Discussion Meeting Task Force (proposal submitted in April, awaiting outcome June/July) 

If you are interested in being involved in Task Force 1-7 please contact Nadine or Geraint or sign up to the Task Force Volunteers.docx in our BIOPOLE Final Outputs and Legacy folder on the Shared Drive AND accept any of the BIOPOLE Task Force calendar invitations sent to the BIOPOLE Community email list! 

We hope that by working together on these Task Forces over the next 10 months, we can share the workload and make this a manageable addition, ensuring it doesn’t place too much pressure on any one person alongside their ongoing deliverables and publications. 

The Author of this Article Geraint Tarling (British Antarctic Survey) and Nadine Johnston (BAS)

On 9^th April, 2026, the Artificial Intelligence for Stable Isotope Tracers (AISIT) programme held its end of programme meeting to assess its final outputs and scientific legacy. The programme had started just 6 months earlier from a comparatively short lead in time since writing the proposal. The AISIT programme was addressing the objectives of an EPSRC/NERC call “AI for Science” to prepare databases and systems to make environmental data more accessible to AI analysis. The idea was to amass as much Arctic freshwater tracer data as possible, including that generated BIOPOLE, into an AI-friendly database. AISIT scientists would also test the database themselves through using it in their own scientific analyses. With just 6 months to get through its ambitious targets, it was a race to the finish.  

A major focus of BIOPOLE is the consequences of warming to the polar regions, which leads to a significant increase in glacial meltwater discharge, large alterations in major Arctic river outputs and unprecedented levels of sea-ice retreat, of which all can alter the amount and the distribution of nutrients in the global ocean. Different sources of freshwater inputs (rivers, glaciers, and sea-ice), can be tracked through tracers such as the stable oxygen isotope δ¹⁸O, as well as certain trace metals and Rare Earth Elements. Freshwater tracer measurements are particularly insightful when combined with accompanying salinity measurements as well as temperature. Application of AI and ML on such data has the potential to identify patterns and cyclicities in the input and movement of freshwater in the Arctic that can complement the more mechanistic analytical and modelling approaches traditionally used by marine scientists. 

Over its 6 months, AISIT achieved the following: (1) a comprehensive compilation  Arctic data entries for δ¹⁸O  (and dissolved Barium) from all available research-grade open data sources, including any unpublished data where viable; (2) the inclusion of ancillary in situ environmental data, especially salinity, temperature and depth, and spatio-temporal information on data collection; (3) quality-control with flags and detailed documentation to guide non-domain experts in its use; (4) open access publication of the database, following the FAIR data management principles. The data can be accessed through a dedicated website (http://www.aisit.ac.ukwww.aisit.ac.uk) as well as from the Polar Data Centre (https://www.bas.ac.uk/data/polar-data-centre/).  

The further value of the AISIT database was training AI and ML methods to examine patterns and trends in environmental data. To this end, AISIT benefited from being able to bring together AI/ML practitioners and non-AI polar and marine science specialists. A major focus was to identify AI/ML challenges to best utilise the AISIT database. As a benchmark, we used a neural network approach to reconstruct the δ¹⁸O distribution and generate Arctic wide maps with a temporal dimension. This approach provided certain performance metrics, such as the capacity to simulate the influence of the climatic Arctic Ocean Oscillation on freshwater inputs and water movements. This has now provided the basis for potential AI challenges, to find ways of gridding the freshwater tracer data in space and time and better reveal underlying climatic oscillations. The challenges are designed to be compatible with platforms such as Kaggle and hackathons to develop analytical Notebooks.  

During our end of programme meeting, the AISIT team brought together the many different elements of the programme and considered legacy outputs such as a high impact data paper, analytical papers examining features of the Arctic Ocean Oscillation and how to construct AI/ML challenges. As evident from the smiles in the picture below, the team were very pleased to have contributed to such a successful and impactful programme.  

Featured Image: AISIT team at our final meeting April 9^th 2026 

In person (left to right): Mike Meredith (BAS), Kate Hendry (BAS), Petra Ten Hoopen (BAS), Jonathan Coney (NOC), Helen Peat (BAS), Charles Thorpe-Morgan (BAS), Yevgeny Aksenov (NOC), Ben Evans (BAS), Geraint Tarling (BAS), Jessica Richt (BAS)

Online: top left: Rachel Heavens (BGS, “High5 for AI” project); top right: Ezra Kitson (UKCEH); bottom, left to right: Tom Prime (NOC), Emily Rowlands (BAS), Eric Orenstein (NOC)

Not in picture: Adrian Martin (NOC), Bryan Spears (UKCEH), Archie Cable (NOC), Pilvi Saarikoski (BAS) 

The Author of this Article Geraint Tarling (British Antarctic Survey)

A new publication involving BIOPOLE researchers has been published in the AGU journal Earth’s Future (https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EF006478). This paper, co-led by Murphy and Williams, provides a conceptual framework for understanding the role ecological processes and feedbacks in the Earth System. It explores current understanding  of ecological feedbacks, how they affect the physical environment and chemical processes, how they may be affected by anthropogenic changes, and the implications for policy makers. The paper also highlights three priority research areas (1. Including ecological feedbacks in assessments of global change and ESMs, 2. Incorporation of ecological feedbacks across scales, 3. Suitable projections for policy advice) and the need for rapid development of understanding of ecological feedbacks and their role in globally important processes. It is particularly relevant to the aspects of global change research being undertaken by BIOPOLE across polar scales. It argues that ecological processes (including those examined by BIOPOLE such as carbon storage, nutrient cycling, and ocean productivity) are underrepresented in Earth System science and future projections.  

The Author of this Article Nadine Johnston (BAS),

Geraint Tarling has recently become a delegate for the UK on the International Arctic Science Council (IASC) Marine Working Group (MWG). IASC is an independent, non-governmental scientific organisation, which aims to promote and coordinate international Arctic research, including the sharing of facilities and data. It mainly focuses on science but can also provide advice policy makers. A major part of IASC is the working groups, covering disciplines such as atmosphere, cryosphere, marine and social sciences. As a UK delegate, Geraint will attend MWG meetings every 6 months, either in person or on-line. In March, he went to Aarhus University, Denmark where the IASC working groups met as part of the Arctic Science Summit Week. The MWG meeting was filled with updates of Arctic science activities being carried out by a number of nations, including non-Arctic nations such as Turkey and Japan. As a further part of their remit, IASC working groups provide a small amount of funding for fellowships aimed at Early Career Researchers. Reports back from these fellows were a particular highlight, such as that from Japanese ECR, Monica Ogawa, who lived with Inuit in Greenland and recorded previously unobserved behaviours in Narwhals.  Geraint made a short report on BIOPOLE and AISIT activities, focussing on the new Arctic delta O18 database. There were reports from other delegates on upcoming major activities, such as the Norwegian multi-billion kroner Arctic Ocean 2050 programme and the EU funded Beyond Arctic Passion programme. Preparing for the next International Polar Year in 2032-2033 was also a major topic of discussion. Overall, the IASC MWG is an important platform in which to make other nations aware of UK science activities and to find out about major national and international Arctic science initiatives where there is the potential to collaborate. 

The Author of this Article Geraint Tarling (British Antarctic Survey)

On 7-8 May 2026, the BIOPOLE project hosted a Grant Writing Workshop for Early Career Researchers (ECRs) from BIOPOLE, other National Capability Long-Term Science Multicentre 2 (NC LTSM 2) projects, and UKRI-BAS. The workshop was delivered by Scriptoria and hosted at UKRI-BAS in Cambridge. It was designed to support ECRs who are planning or actively applying for research funding, helping them to develop strong and competitive fellowship and grant applications. The course was aimed at researchers looking to build their track record and secure funding for independent research through awards, fellowships, and project grants. The workshop was attended by 18 ECRs. Below, one participant reflects on their experience:

‘Just as no one teaches you about taxes when you transition into adulthood, no one teaches you about grant writing when you transition into research. As a new PhD graduate, I only realised now that the nuts and bolts of research funding are treated as an open secret, something you’re supposed to pick up along the way as a PDRA, except that PDRAs rarely get to write grants in the first place. This course cut through all of that and gave us the foundations we should have had from the start.

What I appreciated most about this course was that the leader spared us of the confusion entirely by drawing on real hands-on experience. They broke each stage down into concrete building blocks, making each section of a grant feel learnable rather than like something reserved for those already in the know. Things I once lumped together, aims, objectives, outputs, outcomes, and impacts, suddenly had distinct meanings.

I now have a much clearer sense of how to approach grant writing, and I better understand what my PI and more established colleagues are actually looking for. That means I can contribute meaningfully to the process, rather than just hovering at the edges.

If there is appetite for a follow-up, I would love sessions on where to find relevant grants, how to identify the right collaborators, and how to develop a project idea from the ground up. I suspect the first of those is a course in its own right, and one I would sign up for without hesitation.

I am still confused about my taxes, but at least grant writing is now fully decoded. My biggest takeaway? Ditch the jargon, embrace Gantt chart, and remember that the lay summary might just be the most important part of the grant.’

The authors of the article Ruta Hamilton (British Antarctic Survey) and Print Sakulsupich (Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, project – TerraFIRMA)

The biennial Ocean Sciences Meeting co-sponsored by AGU, TOS and ASLO, is invariably held in the USA. Imagine our delight then, when it was announced that the 2026 meeting was to be held in our favourite Scottish city – Glasgow (sorry Edinburgh CEH folks!). BIOPOLE members jumped at the chance to attend and present their research at one of the biggest gatherings of ocean scientists and professionals. 

For many of us, this was one of the largest and busiest conferences we had attended with well over 5000 delegates from around the world. The conference lasted five days, each with 20+ parallel sessions, keynotes, dozens of exhibits and hundreds of posters to browse. BIOPOLE was represented in many of these; members from WP1&2 co-convened a session on “Pelagic and Coastal Nutrient Cycles in Changing Polar Marine Ecosystem”. Similarly, some WP3 co-convened a session on “Modelling Biophysical Interactions in the Polar Oceans Across Spatial Scales: Ocean–Sea Ice Dynamics, Climate Sensitivity, and Ecosystem Response”. Others presented their work on phytoplankton, copepod observations, and modelling advances in both oral and poster presentation formats. In total we presented 11 BIOPOLE talks and 13 posters. Moreover, we were delighted to be joined by many of the early career scientists that have participated in BIOPOLE-led cruises and land-based field campaigns. It was great to see their results from these campaigns and to catch up over dinner and drinks in the evenings. 

Overall, Ocean Sciences was busy and productive! It was wonderful to see and take part in many discussions covering the whole breadth of BIOPOLE’s science, to strengthen connections and make new ones, and to come home with brains full of new ideas and renewed motivation. 

Following the Ocean Sciences Meeting and staying in Glasgow, several BIOPOLE researchers joined a group of around 100 oceanographers to participate in a three-day workshop organised by the Bio-Carbon project and hosted by the University of Strathclyde’s Technology and Innovation Centre. The workshop objective was to draw on expert opinion to specify the most important processes related to oceanic biological carbon fluxes, rank those processes in order of their probable magnitudes at global scale, and ascribe a measure of readiness for incorporating the process into oceanographic models. The aim of the game was to inform the next generation of global ocean models. The workshop split into eight discussion groups, each with a separate theme related to carbon fluxes, and tasked with specifying and ranking the most important processes within the theme. Particularly relevant to BIOPOLE were discussions on zooplankton processes and active flux via animal migrations. After much deliberation, it was (pretty-much) agreed that zooplankton diel vertical migration is, globally, more significant than seasonal migrations, and that DVM is closer to being readily incorporated into oceanographic models. Asides from the discussion groups, the workshop involved regular plenary talks to keep everyone updated and on-track, a poster session, and, of course, much mingling. To conclude the workshop, the discussion coordinators presented their agreed-upon list of critical biological carbon flux processes, and committed to writing a white paper detailing those findings to motivate and steer further development of ocean models to represent what we agreed are the critical but as yet unresolved processes. 

BIOCARBON participants © A. Martin 

The Author of this Article Jennifer Freer (British Antarctic Survey) and Aidan Hunter (British Antarctic Survey)