Tagged: News

(Rosanne Skirble/Voice of America, 28 February 2007) -- For the next two years, more than 10,000 scientists from 63 nations will study the earth's polar regions and their links to the rest of the globe. The International Polar Year  gets underway [March 1] at a critical time in the planet's history.

Global warming is the central focus of the International Polar Year. Speaking at IPY kickoff ceremonies at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, Columbia University senior scientist Robin Bell says the poles are a barometer of environmental change and are crucial to life on earth. "The science plan really targets capturing the status of the poles, what's going on, quantifying that change, understanding how that change is linking to the rest of the world, pushing the frontiers of science." ...

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Tagged: News

(Tom Spears/Ottawa Citizen via Canada.com, 28 February 2007) -- The majesty of Arctic studies — sweeping vistas, expanses of icy ocean — sometimes comes down to a muddy hole in the ground. This is where it starts for Julian Kanigan, a master’s student in geography at Carleton University, who spent last summer planting sensors in the Mackenzie River delta soil, and inspecting muddy ponds of drilling waste. The Big Picture will come later. For now, scientists all over the world are joining for a year of unprecedented studies of Earth’s north and south ends by 60,000 researchers, called International Polar Year. It kicks off Thursday. And Julian Kanigan, who will describe his work at a conference Thursday at Carleton University, is assembling one small piece of the puzzle.

“I just came back from a summer of field work in the Mackenzie Delta, installing ground temperature cables and going back later to collect the data,” he said. He was back in December, and returns again in April. Sensors show that while the air temperature there has risen by three degrees in 40 years, the soil temperature has risen very little. Mr. Kanigan thinks the snow cover is keeping it cold. Whatever the cause, this feeds into the enormous international effort to measure Arctic temperatures, the fastest-changing in the world.

The work, he recalls, “is no picnic:” living in tents, swarmed by mosquitoes, trying not to get lost in the spruce forest or while navigating a motorboat through the shallow, winding channels. Plenty of mud. He has also been looking for drilling waste — a salty slurry that’s supposed to be frozen harmlessly in deep permafrost pits. But sometimes they puts start to thaw and the liquid wastes can ooze out and form a pond.

“There’s concern about happens if these drilling wastes move into the environment,” he says. That brought a drive to count them and figure out which ones were oozing. It may not match the sanitized southern view of clean snow and polar bears, but as the Mackenzie’s people look toward building a pipeline, this is the work that matters. Students from Carleton and the University of Ottawa get together once a year to show what they’ve learned up north. Thursday’s event is a little more special, as it lines up with the International Polar Year.

Tagged: IPY project, News

(Antarctic Krill Conservation Project press release, via Scoop, 1 March 2007) -- Wellington - The International Polar Year (IPY) is a large scientific program, organized through the International Council for Science and the World Meteorological Organization, that focuses on Antarctic and Arctic research. Thousands of scientists from more than 60 countries will spend the next two years studying biological, physical and social issues impacting both polar regions.

“Research on Antarctic krill needs to be an important component of IPY projects. These small, shrimp-like creatures play a central role in the Antarctic marine ecosystem. Hundreds of species, including seals, penguins, albatrosses, petrels and whales, depend upon these tiny crustaceans for their survival. Remove this one vital link and the entire food web collapses.”

“The International Polar Year provides an exciting framework for carrying out a wide range of science projects, global public education efforts and other awareness raising initiatives involving a variety of research disciplines.”

“In the Antarctic, krill are not currently overfished, but troublesome signs loom on the horizon. Overexploitation, global warming and other ecosystem-related changes threaten the future of krill and the animals that prey upon them. The International Polar Year offers countless opportunities to break new ground and help ensure that abundant krill remain part of Antarctica’s long-term future.”

Tagged: News, Public events and conferences

(Nordic Council News, 28 February 2007) -- The International Polar Year gets underway on 1 March. It will be launched in Denmark at an opening event in the North Atlantic House where one of the veterans of polar research, with the patron of the International Polar Year HRH Crown Prince Frederik as middleman, will symbolically pass the baton to one of the Polar Year's young scientists.

Tagged: News, Public events and conferences

(CPIN Forum, 28 February 2007) -- The International Polar Year Publications Database (IPYPD) is now available at http://biblioline.nisc.com/scripts/login.dll

The IPYPD will attempt to identify and describe all publications that result from, or that are about, the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-2008 and the three previous IPYs. The IPYPD currently describes 60 publications. This number is expected to grow to approximately 20,000 publications ten years from now.

The IPYPD will be updated four times per year. The records in the IPYPD contain citations, detailed subject and geographic indexing terms, abstracts, and, in most cases, links to the online full text of the publications.

The IPYPD is part of the IPY Data and Information Service (IPYDIS). The success of the IPYPD depends on the willingness of IPY researchers, educators and communicators to report their publications, as requested by the IPY Data Policy.

The IPYPD has been created by the Arctic Science and Technology Information System (ASTIS), the Cold Regions Bibliography Project (CRBP), the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) Library, the Discovery and Access of Historic Literature of the IPYs (DAHLI) project and National Information Services Corporation (NISC).

ASTIS, a project of the Arctic Institute of North America at the University of Calgary, is responsible for the Canadian component of the IPYPD. Later this spring ASTIS will create a bilingual Canadian IPY Publications Database to make the IPYPD's Canadian content available separately. Funding for the Canadian component of the IPYPD has been provided by EnCana Corporation.

For additional details, please see the About tab on the IPYPD website.

Posted by Amanda Graham – 1 March 2007; 2:19:46 AM – Permalink  

Tagged: Education and outreach, IPY project, News

(Sue Bailey/CP via RedOrbit, 28 February 2007) -- OTTAWA - Melting ice and Arctic health will get millions of dollars in federal funds Thursday as Ottawa kicks off International Polar Year.

Researchers studying the dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice to global warming will get at least $10 million to extend and launch new studies, sources told The Canadian Press. Arctic population health projects led by specialists at Laval University in Quebec will also receive a lion's share of federal funds worth a total of $150 million, sources say. Final selections from among hundreds of proposed studies will be announced Thursday at the Museum of Civilization.

An ice span the size of Lake Superior - about 70,000 square kilometres - is disappearing from the Arctic each year. The prospect of an ice-free Arctic in the next 40 years has profound implications for Inuit health, wildlife, offshore oil and mineral exploration and, ultimately, issues of sovereignty. In all, more than 50,000 scientists from 63 countries around the world will descend on the Earth's poles to study everything from polar chemistry to contaminants in fish.

Projects will actually be spread over 2007 and 2008 so that researchers can spend two full seasons in both the Arctic and Antarctic. Follow-up analysis is expected to extend four years beyond that.

Tagged: News

(Press release/Web site via The Norway Post, 28 February 2007) -- The official opening ceremony will be led by Crown Prince Haakon and Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg also takes part. More than 3,000 pupils from Oslo schools will participate in the event.

There will also be ceremonies at Arctic Longyearbyen and Ny-Ålesund on Svalbard, at the Norwegian scientific Troll Base in the Antarctic and at the Polar Centre in Tromsø.

The International Polar Year (IPY) is a research programme under the auspices of the International Council for Science (ICSU) and the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO). Planning has been underway for several years. IPY is an extraordinary initiative that will significantly advance polar research. All the approved research projects will be conducted by multi-national groups of researchers.

The International Polar Year (IPY) spans a two-year period. During this time research resources and funding from over 60 countries will be coordinated in an extraordinary initiative to increase our knowledge about the Arctic and Antarctic. The International Polar Year 2007-2008 will likely be the largest, international research collaboration ever undertaken.

Norwegian scientists and research institutions are prepared to play an important role in the IPY. Out of more than 200 international cluster projects endorsed by IPY, about half involve Norwegian partners, and ten clusters in the portfolio are headed by Norwegians, the Norwegian Research Council states.

Norway will play a prominent role during International Polar Year 2007-2008, not least by virtue of its dynamic research communities linked to an extensive international network, as well as its excellent facilities and logistical support in both the Arctic and Antarctic. By allocating NOK 330 million over four years, Norway is also one of the largest financial contributers to the initiative.

Posted by Amanda Graham – 1 March 2007; 1:02:02 AM – Permalink  

Tagged: News, Public events and conferences

Google News search results:
Scientists Worldwide Embrace International Polar Year Voice of America
Melting ice, Arctic health will get millions for International... Canada.com
International two-year program launched to study poles Daily Kent Stater
all 257 news articles

Launch of the International Polar Year
Nordic Council, Denmark - 15 hours ago
The International Polar Year gets underway on 1 March. It will be launched in Denmark at an opening event in the North Atlantic House where one of the ...

Statement of Clifton Curtis
Scoop.co.nz (press release), New Zealand - 8 hours ago
Wellington - The International Polar Year (IPY) is a large scientific program, organized through the International Council for Science and the World ...

Geography student assembles one piece of Arctic puzzle
Ottawa Citizen (subscription), Canada - 15 hours ago
Thursday’s event is a little more special, as it lines up with the International Polar Year. There are speeches (with one by Roy Koerner, a famous Canadian ...

Posted by Amanda Graham – 1 March 2007; 12:57:48 AM – Permalink  

Tagged: News, Public events and conferences