Stefanie Kremser attended the 25th SPARC SSG meeting in South Korea to represent the SPARC SSiRC activity together with Larry Thomason . She also joined 45 participants at the Early Career Researchers Symposium and about 100 participants at the adjacent regional WCRP/SPARC workshop on WCRP Grand Challenges and Regional Climate Change. The events were jointly organised by the Seoul National University and the Korean Polar Research Institute. They took place on 18-20 October 2017 at the Korean Polar Research Institute in Incheon, near Seoul, South Korea. Stefanie would like to thank SPARC and WCRP for travel support to attend the meetings and workshop.