PCAPS Open Session Report 2025 published
On 15 April 2025, PCAPS held its annual Open Session at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, UK. Arctic and Antarctic researchers, forecasters and stakeholders gathered to discuss forecasting challenges and opportunities for collaboration during the half-day event. Today, the PCAPS Open Session Report 2025 with proceedings and key takeaways was published.
Jelmer Jeuring introduces the interactive exercise to the breakout groups. Photo credit: Gita Ljubicic.
The Open Sessions are held on an annual basis in connection with the PCAPS Steering Group meetings. Previous Open Sessions were organised by the PPP-SERA working group, while the first PCAPS Open Session was held in 2024 in Hobart, Australia. Due to the transdisciplinary and complex nature of the issues that PCAPS aims to address, it is paramount to facilitate and integrate stakeholder and user expertise, experiences, and input into PCAPS’ work.
The Open Sessions are rooted in PCAPS’ aim for establishing inclusive dialogues across research disciplines, as well as between and among stakeholders from different polar regions. As such, the Open Sessions provide an opportunity to seek input from Antarctic and Arctic stakeholders and experts, on topics that includes polar research and operational challenges and opportunities, in addition to bottlenecks and best practices in information provision and use, as well as forecasting information needs.
The 2025 Open Session consisted of a hybrid part with keynote presentations, and an interactive in-person-only part with breakout group discussions. The breakout group discussions revolved around a tabletop mapping exercise, using a value-cycle framework, with the goal to map gaps and challenges in providing polar forecast information services.
Value-cycle framework used in the breakout sessions (Heinrich, 2025; adapted from Haupt et al., 2018).
See this earlier blog post for a more detailed description of the Open Session.
The complete report can be downloaded via the PCAPS Publications page.