It’s finally spring!

And what a spring! It’s been unusually warm for the past couple weeks here in Finland, and we already now have leaves on the trees by mid-May! It’s not only the spring weather that has been busy here, but we’ve also had an extremely hectic times here at the TA Coordination office, as you can see from the following.

The summery photo is not from Finland or any Arctic place, but from Puglia area in southern Italy, where we recently had the INTERACT Daily Management Group meeting -it was really beautiful there, too, even though the north is still the closest to my heart!

The new TA User Groups were selected in March, and we will have 47 TA/RA User Groups working at the INTERACT stations in the summer 2018 and autumn/winter 2018-2019 field seasons. We’ve already hosted a webinar to the User Groups to instruct with practical matters related to TA and RA, and to welcome them to the several TA User Community activities that we are arranging around the year.

Recently, we also launched our INTERACT TA Ambassadors, whom you can meet at various congresses and meetings during the year to chat about TA and related opportunities. Learn more about the TA Ambassadors from the dedicated webpages!

The new season of INTERACT Arctic Research Blogs is about to start within the next couple weeks, when the first TA User Groups start their work at the stations. We already have many bloggers recruited for the summer, both seasoned bloggers from the previous field seasons and complete newcomers. Looking forward to follow the adventures of the scientists in their Arctic fieldwork!

The next TA User Community meeting will take place during the gathering of both Arctic and Antarctic scientists -the Polar 2018 meeting in Davos, Switzerland. The meeting will be about different modalities of TA, including Remote and Virtual Access and related opportunities for research. The meeting will take place on Wed 20th June at 12:30-14:00 in Room A Wisshorn and it’s open for all congress participants. Come to meet us, if you are attending the Polar 2018!

Until the next time,

Hannele