A Capstone of NSF-supported International Polar Year Deployments, AGAP Project May Help Determine What Caused Ice Sheet to Form Flying twin-engine light aircraft the equivalent of several trips around the globe and establishing a network of seismic instruments across an area the size of Texas, a US-led international team of scientists has not only verified the existence of a mountain range that is suspected to have caused the massive East Antarctic Ice Sheet to form, but also has created a detailed picture of the rugged landscape buried under more than four kilometers (2.5 miles) of ice. ...

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...

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...

Photo Credit - AGAP team There were many times in the last two months where it seemed that the Antarctic Continent would win, keeping hidden the extensive landscape of subglacial lakes and mountains beneath the several kilometers of ice on Dome A. All the advance planning and negotiating with program leaders and logistics groups for enough days in the field to run the airborne geophysics were of little importance once we arrived on Antarctica. At this point we were negotiating with the continent herself, and we learned she can drive a hard bargain! The group at AGAP S camp had anticipated...

In order to move work teams to the AGAP camps we must move everyone through the South Pole in order to acclimatize to the high altitude. This has presented a bottleneck of sorts, and along with other delays is putting the project considerably behind schedule. With equipment calibrated and people antsy to move out of McMurdo the next focus is how to move people through the next short stop at South Pole. A spreadsheet has been made and people have been moved back and forth on the sheet in response to weather delays and changing shifting. For days people have had bags sorted and checked waiting...

For several years we have been preparing for what seems an incredibly small window of a field season. Working as part of a six nation team we have coordinated our equipment, our personnel, our science plans, and our logistics until it seems we will even breath at the appropriate time! Our project, Antarctic Gamburtsev Province (AGAP), will map through the ice of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, imaging the sleeping giant that lies below. This sleeping giant is a European Alp sized mountain range called the Gamburtsev Mountains, discovered 50 years ago by a team of Russian scientists as they traversed across this extensive ice sheet. Di...

“Preserve the Polar Regions and Glaciers”: A major philatelic event for the closing of IPY in March 2009 Last Saturday September 20t 2008, at the “Austria Center Vienna”, a few steps from the UN Headquarter in Vienna, have been officially presented the major philatelic event concerning the “International Polar Year 2007-2009”. To pay tribute to all the efforts made during this fourth “International Polar Year” 2007-2009 and to deliver a strong message aimed at the whole world, the postal administrations of around 40 countries have decided to joint to produce a common stamp issue concerning the problem of the Global Warming and featuring the slogan “Preserve the Polar Regions and Glaciers”. Started ...