L'intervention de Valérie PECRESSE à la conférence sur l'année polaire internationale organisée par le Sénat du France est disponible à www.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr. «La France est aux avant-postes et reste un leader dans les activités scientifiques en milieu polaire», a souligné Valérie Pécresse lors du colloque de clôture de l'Année polaire internationale, qui s'est tenu le 14 mai 2009. À cette occasion, la ministre a annoncé la création de l'observatoire international de l'Arctique qui rassemblera l'ensemble de la communauté scientifique et aura le rôle d'une vigie ...

As predicted by all IPCC models, Arctic sea ice will most likely disappear during summers in the near future. However, it seems like this is going to happen much sooner than models predicted, as pointed out by recent observations and data reanalysis undertaken during IPY and the Damocles Integrated Project. On February 25, 2009, there will be a celebration in Geneva, Switzerland to officially close the 4th IPY that started on March 1st 2007 in Paris, France. It is not a surprise that one of the main topics of this 4th IPY was climate change, since the polar regions play a very important role in Earth's climate. This role is magnified by the combined effect of two main processes: one is due to the presence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere trapping longwave solar radiat...

Recent observations of Arctic Ocean outflow in the Fram Strait suggest that freshwater is piling up in the Arctic Ocean. A change in wind direction could release the largest amount of freshwater through Fram Strait ever recorded. Photo: Rudi Caeyers The freshwater transport from the Arctic to lower latitudes is one of the main ways of the Arctic to interact with the global climate system. The effect of such a release of freshwater depends on the final magnitude and nature of the release. “The effects this release will have on the climate processes are in the focus of ongoing res...

Winnipeg, Canada — 18 February 2009 — The University of Manitoba-led project that gained worldwide appeal and interest will be one of the highlights of a conference in Europe Feb. 25, 2009 as International Polar Year (IPY) wraps. An IPY committee will release its State of Polar Research report at that time to summarize all the IPY studies, one of the largest of which was led by a climate change expert at the University of Manitoba. “Our data is coming in and our team is looking forward to the next phase of our research,” says Barber, David Barber, Canada Research Chair in Arctic System Science and director of the Centre for Earth Observation Science (CEOS) at the University of Manitoba. “IPY gave us this tremendous window into climate change. What we learned about...

Below are documents that we will be discussing and developing at the IPY/Oslo 2010 meeting for Education, Outreach, and Communication in Geneva, February 23-24th 2009.

The meeting will occur at WMO headquarters. Directions to meeting building.

Please become familiar with these documents prior to the meeting. Hard copies will not be made available,- it is your choice to bring them either as hard copies or electronically.

Logistics & Committee Business
Agenda & Participant List
EOC Committee Mandate

Oslo 2010 Conference
Overarching principles for EOC activities during OSC 2010 K Ulstein
Categorising EOC activities during OSC 2010 K Ulstein, R Malherbe, S Zicus
APECS Participation in Oslo 2010 J Baeseman
Catalogue of EOC Session proposals K Ulstein
Virtual Component L Murphy

Polar Resource Book
Vision Document - discussion paper R Salmon, B Kaiser
All content collected so far

Photo-exhibit
Poles Apart flyer

Polar Bears and Penguins May Live at Opposite Poles, But Census of Marine Life Explorers Find Hundreds of Identical Species Thrive in Both Arctic and Antarctic Contacts: Mr. Terry Collins, +1-416-878-8712; +1-416-538-8712; This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Ms. Darlene Trew Crist, +1-401-295-1356; +1-401-952-7692; This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Mr. Gregg Schmidt, +1-202- 448-1231; This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Experts are available for advance interviews. Video and high-resolution images are online at www.coml.org/embargo/polar2009 Download PDF of CoML IPY Press Release for i...

EBA is a complex interdisciplinary project involving over 40 research groups from approximately 22 nations, as well as links to the Arctic research community. Its work crosses traditional disciplinary divides within biology, in particular working across the marine and terrestrial realms. EBA has multiple aims reflected in its structure of 5 work packages. At a broad scale, these packages are aimed at understanding how the various ecosystems of Antarctica are structured and function, what historical processes have shaped them to be as they are now, what evolutionary processes have taken place in the Antarctic environment and, in turn, what that tells us about the environment itself. Finally, in the context of parts of Antarctica currently facing the fastest rates of environmental change on ...

(c) National Science Foundation After years of planning, strategizing, and international discussions and debate, what once seemed to be only lofty scientific ambitions are now closer than ever to becoming a reality. Ever since subglacial lakes captured the imagination of scientists and the public more than a decade ago, researchers have dreamed of entering and sampling these alien environments to unlock secrets that might guide us in the search for life elsewhere in our solar system. The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research’s (SCAR) Scientific Research Program (SRP) on Subglacial Antarctic Lake Envir...

My name is Henry Stanislaw and I am from the USA. Together with Maria Puig Ribas from Spain, Nora Hasselbach and Vincent Butty from Switzerland, Alexandra Le Dily from France and Carlien Wolmarans from South Africa, I joined the Young Explorer Program within Mike Horn’s PANGAEA Expedition. This program is created to introduce young adults to exploration, but also to scientific working and learning about the environmental conditions and threats. The first trip in this program took us to Antarctica. Mike is starting his expedition here, where he will walk alone from the Peninsula to the South Pole and back. For all of us this is the first contact with a polar environment. We started in Ushuaia / Tierra del Fuego, South ...

The Arctic has always been a difficult place to do any extensive monitoring and data collection. Until recently, there have only been a limited number of projects that have taken any significant, long-term, and coordinated observations of the Arctic Ocean and adjacent bodies of water. This is due in part to the extensive sea ice cover that persists over Arctic waters for a good part of the year, which makes it difficult to conduct ship surveys or deploy weather buoys and moorings to measure deep water currents. Arctic ROOS (Regional Ocean...