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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.

The EU-PolarNet 2 Workshop, arranged on 7th June 2022, aimed to collate, in a co-design process, actionable policy-level recommendations to accelerate the development of Integrated Polar Observing System (IPOS). This deliverable (D6.4 Minutes of a Workshop with Coordinators of European Polar Observing System) presents the minutes of the meeting, including a detailed analysis of the workshop outcomes and the resulting recommendations. The recommendations will feed into a white paper to accelerate the development of a sustained and fully integrated Polar observing system (D6.7), published in 2024. The workshop discussions were analysed with content analysis to extract the recommendations for the future development of IPOS. The overall vision of the future IPOS is an open, transparent, and poly-centric system adopting a tier or layered approach both regarding the engagement of its contributors and the observations conducted. Essential variables based on provision of societal benefits should be defined and should constitute the core of the system, allowing smaller operations on the side while also ensuring scientific excellence. The recommended immediate actions to be taken into account in the development of IPOS include efforts on e.g. the identification of sustainable funding sources, and establishment of platforms and action groups for the joint development of different areas of IPOS such as infrastructure and data, governing, funding, and stakeholders. Long-term recommendations spanning over the years focus on e.g. the governing structure, technology advancement and funding instruments and agreements for IPOS. Overall, it was recommended to proceed step by step, starting immediately and adjusting the course of action during the development.

Defining a Shared Arctic Variable (SAV) based on permafrost or 'Living on frozen ground', as part of the Arctic PASSION (‘Pan-Arctic Observing System of Systems: Implementing Observations for societal Needs’) combines scientific observations with novel approaches to bettering our understanding from the point of view of Arctic communities. Arctic PASSION therefore proposes using ‘Permafrost’ as a starting point for one Expert Panel to start developing a proposal for a SAV to the ROADS Advisory Panel.

Defining sea ice as a Shared Arctic Variable (SAV) as part of the Arctic PASSION (‘Pan-Arctic Observing System of Systems: Implementing Observations for societal Needs’) combines scientific observations with novel approaches to bettering our understanding from the point of view of Arctic communities. Arctic PASSION therefore proposes using ‘Sea Ice’ as a starting point for one Expert Panel to start developing a proposal for a SAV to the ROADS Advisory Panel.

This document presents a basis for alignment of polar data policies, notably the policies and statements of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC), the Sustaining Arctic Observing Networks (SAON) initiative, the Arctic Spatial Data Infrastructure, and the Southern Ocean Observing System (SOOS). The document examines the state and recent developments of global and important regional data policies, as well as technological and institutional developments that should or might be considered when forming new polar data policies. Based on this examination, we conclude by identifying a number of data management principles that can be regarded as essential to the management of polar research data and can be incorporated in all polar data policies in such a way that they are aligned with each other and with overarching global and regional data policies.

A diverse and distributed range of existing polar observing facilities and activities could be better utilised to address societally relevant scientific problems. The fundamental challenge related to the utilisation of polar observations is that observing networks and observing systems that produce observations are diverse and distributed of nature. There are many networks of polar observing facilities and activities and portals that organises information about observing facilities and activities, but often they do not share the information. If they do, it is done in a non-consistent way with custom data structures, custom vocabularies, and typically with limited access. There are only a few standards for organising the information within this field. The hindrances for an efficient organisation of the information are technical as well as political, social, and psychological. This document formulates recommendations that can address these hindrances. The technical recommendations have focus on federated search, a concept that is already well developed within the polar data management community. Achieving a basic level of technical, syntactical, and semantic interoperability (applying the so-called FAIR principles), would make it easier to aggregate information across sources. The recommendations to overcome political, social, and psychological hindrances have focus on tools that have worked in the data management world: Data policies should be formulated to also cover organising information about observing facilities and activities, as well as funding and training within them. European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101003766 Published Refereed Current 14.a Mature Validated (tested by third parties) Multi-organisational International Method Reports with methodological relevance