If you want to get involved in International Polar Year right from the start now is your chance!! The IPY Youth Steering Committee is asking young people from around the world to write to their political leaders (and send a copy to us) about their concerns for the Polar Regions and what they personally are doing to make a difference (biking to school, recycling, starting a polar club in their school, doing a polar science project). The YSC will present these letters at the official launch of IPY in Paris on March 1st and on our website. Throughout the Polar Year we will follow up with youth to see how they are doing with their commitments. To find out more download the launch package. Text: Melian...

January 2007 The Smithsonian Institution announces a polar science symposium in early May 2007, as one of the inaugural U.S. contributions to celebrate the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-2008. Smithsonian at the Poles: Contributions to International Polar Year Science is being convened by Smithsonian Under Secretary for Science David L. Evans. The symposium will present research findings by Smithsonian scholars and their collaborators from Artic and Antarctic research, with particular attention to changes in polar systems past, present and future, and their global impact. The symposium will carry on a tradition of polar science that began nearly 150 years ago and resulted in some of the worlds foremost collections and archives of Arctic an...

Good news for IPY and for our Danish colleagues! The Finance Committee of the Danish Parliament has approved additional funding for IPY. The following is an unofficial translation of the official notes associated with the approval of the IPY funding: 'In 2007-2009 the International Polar Year (IPY) will take place and on this background 30,000,000 DKK will be allocated in 2007 and in 2008 in order to accentuate the IPY opportunity. The funds will supplement the current grants for Arctic research and logistics support and will be issued by the Commission for Scientific Reseach in Greenland and the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation, respectively.' For more information, visit the ...

You can track the Polarstern research vessel in a number of ways as it traverses Antarctic waters. You can view the raw coordinate data here on www.sailwx.info's tracking map. You can also track it in Google Earth by downloading this constantly updated file from the SCAR MarBIN portal. The file in turn accesses position data from this page on the Polar View website, which al...

Boulder, Colorado is home to some of the world's leading polar and climate experts, and so to help celebrate the beginning of the International Polar Year we'll be holding Ice Fest, which may, if successful, become an annual event. This year it will be held March 8-11th on the University of Colorado at Boulder campus, with "Arts & Sciences Day "on Thursday March 8th showcasing phenomenal photograph from both polar regions, a special keynote talk on Friday followed by "An Evening with Michael Brown," an award-winning Boulder filmmaker, "Family Day" on Saturday t...

In partnership with the Japanese National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR), Elsevier will launch "Polar Science", a new international peer-reviewed journal, in 2007. This new quarterly journal is a consolidation of five existing publications: "Polar Bioscience", "Polar Meteorology and Glaciology", "Antarctic Meteorite Research", "Polar Geoscience", and "Advances in Polar Upper Atmosphere Research". Under the Editorship of professor Kazuo Shibuya (NIPR & Department of Polar Science, SOKENDAI, Tokyo), the journal will publish original articles and reviews focused on a wide spectrum of sciences related to the polar regions of the Earth and other planets. For more information about the journal, please go to the ...

European Union International Polar Year - Arctic Research Opportunities at the European Centre for Arctic Environmental Research (Ny-

The IPY is ambitious in scope and in scale. The IPY Programme Office has endorsed 99 projects with Antarctic or bipolar focus for the IPY. These projects encompass at least 350 research activities, of which 82% plan to conduct fieldwork in Antarctica. Of these activities, 105 (37%) activities are planning to leave behind physical infrastructure. To date, only two have completed any environmental impact assessments. The Antarctic Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC) is conducting a project to enhance the environmental legacy of the IPY through outreach efforts to scientists, tourists and other visitors of Antarctica. We presented a poster on this subject at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, USA in December 2006. Our goal was to ra...

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Norway has developed a set of Visual Profile Elements for IPY. These include images, collages, fonts, colour schemes, textual graphics, and style manuals. The 'International Polar Year 2007-2008' text at the top of this and every other page of this web site comes from the Norwegian products; several other national IPY web sites use the same textual elements. We use other Norwegian-designed elements in our printed materials, and I use the textual elements, images, fonts and colour maps in all my presentations. We do not insist on the use of these elements, or declare them as the IPY standard. Instead, we feel very pleased to offer them for use by IPY participants, secretariats, and national organisations. Norway makes them available at no cost to the user. IPY IPO thanks the Norwe...