Understanding how Antarctica is changing and how these changes influence the rest of the Earth is fundamental to the future robustness of human society. Strengthening our understanding of these changes and their implications requires dedicated, sustained and coordinated observations of key Antarctic indicators. The Troll Observing Network (TONe), now under development, is Norway's contribution to the global need for sustained, coordinated, complementary and societally relevant observations from Antarctica. When fully implemented within the coming three years, TONe will be a state-of-theart, multi -platform, multi -disciplinary observing network in data -sparse Dronning Maud Land. A critical part of the network is a data management system that will ensure broad, free access to all TONe data to the international research community.

This paper reports on the Hackathon Sessions organised at the Polar Data Forum IV (PDF IV) (20–24 September 2021), during which 351 participants from 50 different countries discussed collaboratively about the latest developments in polar data management. The 4th edition of the PDF hosted lively discussions on (i) best practices for polar data management, (ii) data policy, (ii) documenting data flows into aggregators, (iv) data interoperability, (v) polar federated search, (vi) semantics and vocabularies, (vii) Virtual Research Environments (VREs), and (viii) new polar technologies. This paper provides an overview of the organisational aspects of PDF IV and summarises the polar data objectives and outcomes by describing the conclusions drawn from the Hackathon Sessions.

Quantarctica (https://www.npolar.no/quantarctica) is a geospatial data package, analysis environment, and visualization platform for the Antarctic Continent, Southern Ocean (>40oS), and sub-Antarctic islands. Quantarctica works with the free, cross-platform Geographical Information System (GIS) software QGIS and can run without an Internet connection, making it a viable tool for fieldwork in remote areas. The data package includes basemaps, satellite imagery, terrain models, and scientific data in nine disciplines, including physical and biological sciences, environmental management, and social science. To provide a clear and responsive user experience, cartography and rendering settings are carefully prepared using colour sets that work well for typical data combinations and with consideration of users with common colour vision deficiencies. Metadata included in each dataset provides brief abstracts for non-specialists and references to the original data sources. Thus, Quantarctica provides an integrated environment to view and analyse multiple Antarctic datasets together conveniently and with a low entry barrier.

One of the central aspects of Open Science is to make research outputs accessible. From Open Access to scientific publications, the perspective has widened to also include other results, such as research data. Open Data is an important part of ensuring reproducible research, as well as enabling reuse of research data. When making research data publicly available, a licence should be applied, describing restrictions and permissions for reuse. But how do you decide what licence to use for research data, to ensure that it is “As open as possible, as closed as necessary”? Who has the rights to research data in publicly funded research? What data should be published, and what data needs to be kept confidential? In 2020, the Ministry of Education and Research asked the Research Council of Norway and UNIT to set up a committee to examine issues related to rights and licensing of research data. In this presentation, members of the committee will highlight and discuss some of the recommendations in the final report. To ensure Open and FAIR research data, the legal aspects must be clarified. In addition, the committee has highlighted several other aspects that need to be addressed in order to achieve more sharing and reuse of research data, including funding incentives, infrastructure and tools, as well as resources and competence.

The Norwegian Scientific Data Network (NorDataNet) is a national e-infrastructure building on the legacy of the International Polar Year. Initially it is focusing on geoscience and establishing interoperability interfaces between existing national data repositories in the areas of discovery metadata and data as well as on harmonised data documentation following the FAIR guiding principles. The technical foundation of NorDataNet is built on data documentation standards, standardised interoperability interfaces and semantic resources. This is now in place and preliminary functionalities are available. These includes the ability to discover and access datasets across the data repositories integrated, as well as visualisation and transformation of datasets served using the requested documentation standards and interfaces. Bottlenecks and achievements while working towards FAIR compliant data and data centres interoperability will be presented.

Well-founded data management systems are of vital importance for ocean observing systems as they ensure that essential data are not only collected but also retained and made accessible for analysis and application by current and future users. Effective data management requires collaboration across activities including observations, metadata and data assembly, quality assurance and control (QA/QC), and data publication that enables local and interoperable discovery and access and secures archiving that guarantees long-term preservation. To achieve this, data should be findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR). Here, we outline how these principles apply to ocean data and illustrate them with a few examples. In recent decades, ocean data managers, in close collaboration with international organizations, have played an active role in the improvement of environmental data standardization, accessibility, and interoperability through different projects, enhancing access to observation data at all stages of the data life cycle and fostering the development of integrated services targeted to research, regulatory, and operational users. As ocean observing systems evolve and an increasing number of autonomous platforms and sensors are deployed, the volume and variety of data increase dramatically. For instance, there are more than 70 data catalogs that contain metadata records for the polar oceans, a situation that makes comprehensive data discovery beyond the capacity of most researchers. To better serve research, operational, and commercial users, more efficient turnaround of quality data in known formats and made available through Web services is necessary. In particular, automation of data workflows will be critical to reduce friction throughout the data value chain. Adhering to the FAIR principles with free, timely, and unrestricted access to ocean observation data is beneficial for the originators, has obvious benefits for users, and is an essential foundation for the development of new services made possible with big data technologies.

ABSTRACT This paper explores the changing infrastructure around weather and sea ice information provisioning for Arctic marine areas. Traditionally, the most important providers of operational information on sea ice and weather conditions are the national sea ice and meteorological services. More recently, the community of Arctic information providers has become more heterogeneous with the establishment of numerous collaborative platforms. Three case studies will enhance our understanding of current developments (BarentsWatch, Polar View and Arctic Web). We analyze their organization and funding structures, the types of services they develop, and their target groups. Based upon these cases, we discuss the information infrastructure’s dynamics and underlying drivers of change. Apart from an expected need for customized services due to changing Arctic activity patterns, new initiatives arise due to a combination of (1) progress in information and communication technology, (2) a need to enhance interoperability of data systems, (3) and a desire to improve customized data conveyance from provider to user. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the changing Arctic information infrastructure and defines directions for further research.

The 2007-09 Norway-USA Traverse of East Antarctica collected dual-frequency Global Positioning System (GPS) data at 5-s intervals on two of the traverse vehicles. The traverse covered 2400 km from the coast to the vicinity of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in 2007-08, and a 2600 km route from the South Pole to the coast in 2008-09. Side traverses were also conducted in 2008-09, for a total of over 10 000 km of GPS data between the two vehicles. We use precise point positioning to post-process our single receiver kinematic GPS data. Analysis of data obtained while the vehicles were stationary shows individual solutions are accurate to ca. 1 cm horizontally and 3 cm vertically. We compare our GPS elevations with those determined by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat), a space-based altimeter designed to measure ice elevation. ICESat accuracy is evaluated by cross-over analysis; mean differences calculated between dh/dt-corrected ICESat data and GPS-derived surface elevations for two vehicles and two traverse seasons range from -12 to -2 cm, within ICESat's stated goal of ±15 cm, while 1-σ values of the same data imply that ICESat's precision is ca. 15.8 cm.

We present the results of ground penetrating radar (GPR) investigations performed during the Norwegian Antarctic Research Expedition 2005–2006 with the aim of detecting, mapping and mitigating crevasse hazard. The study focused primarily on a stretch of the route from the research station “Troll” to the cargo unloading area on the ice shelf margin, where the presence of crevasses has resulted in occasional material damage and constitutes a potential hazard to people safety. A 400-MHz GPR system was utilised to detect the crevasses and tentatively to enable a real-time assessment of the width of the cavities and of the thickness and structure of the snow bridges. An in situ validation of the information provided by different radar signatures was obtained by directly inspecting a number of crevasses. This also allowed us to mitigate the hazard by identifying weak areas and establishing safe crossing points. The interpretation of more ambiguous radar signatures is also validated by using a numerical model. Finally, we have tested the possibility of using radar antennas slanted in the drive direction to increase the detection distance as compared to the traditional down-looking installation. Our results confirm the reliability of GPR for the detection of crevasses and contribute to developing the radar into a standard tool for safer navigation in polar regions.