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The ozone hole over East Antarctica has been quite large during the austral spring, and Belgian journalist Jos Van Hemelrijck has felt its effects firsthand.

As the winner of the 2014 InBev-Baillet Latour Antarctic Fellowship, the largest research grant awarded to young polar researchers, Dr Jan Lenaerts from Utrecht University in the Netherlands will be spending several weeks away from the Princess Elisabeth station at the King Baudoin Ice Shelf on the coast conducting research for the BENEMELT project.

"We got treated with warm croissants for breakfast this Sunday. Apart from that, it was nothing like a normal Sunday here at Princess Elisabeth," recounted veteran Belgian reporter Jos van Hemelrijck. Staff members and scientists are working hard to prepare the first field trips of the season.

The 2014-15 season is in full swing now that the first batch of scientists have finally arrived. The new arrivals get acquainted with life at the station and go for crevasse training.

Several scientists, a teacher, a veteran Belgian journalist, a field guide, and the team’s doctor will arrive in Antarctica in a few days, more than doubling the number of people at the station.

The BELARE 10 team welcomes a few new members, while an electronics teacher prepares for his first trip to Antarctica, thanks to his students!

With 49 speakers and moderators taking part this year, more than 200 participants attended the fifth edition of the International Polar Foundation's annual Arctic Futures Symposium.

Once again, Arctic stakeholders and high-profile policymakers will gather in Brussels on the 14th and 15th of October for the 5th edition of the Arctic Futures Symposium. Held at the Residence Palace in the European Quarter of Brussels, the 2014 symposium will focus on "The Arctic, its peoples, and its economies".

Dr Jan Lenaerts, a Belgian researcher working at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, has been awarded the prestigious €150,000 InBev-Baillet Latour Antarctica Fellowship for his BENEMELT project.

On Thursday 11 September, nineteen top Arctic institutes throughout Europe (including the International Polar Foundation) formally presented the results of the work done to investigate the feasibility of establishing a permanent EU Arctic Information Centre (EUAIC), a "network of networks" designed to provide quick and easy information about the Arctic to policy-makers.