IPY launch events around the world can be viewed live at the Arctic Portal. We also encourage everyone to launch a virtual balloon and show how many people around the world care about the polar regions and are interested in IPY. Everyone is welcome to join in, young or old, polar or tropical! The Official Opening Ceremony takes place in Paris at 11am local time. That is UTC 10:00, or, 1am in Anchorage, 5am in New York, 7am in Santiago, 3.30pm in Calcutta, 7pm in Tokyo, and 9pm in Sydney. You can watch it live or after the event on the web at the Arctic Portal, where you will also find webcasts of other national launch events from around th...

Watch IPY launch events on-line at the Arctic Portal and elsewhere. Throughout this week, over twenty nations around the world are celebrating the launch of the International Polar Year 2007-2008. New Zealand, Indigenous People, Argentina, and the Ukraine have already held extremely successful events. This week, Monday will see Press and Participants gathering in London, Strasbourg, and Washington DC, and Portugal will be holding their kick-off event on Wednesday. Thursday is the big day, with the Global Launch occurring in Paris at 1000 UTC (1100 local Central European Time) and national celebrations in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Greenland, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Norway, ...

The Permafrost Young Researchers Network (PYRN) is hosting its kick-off meeting at the Abisko Scientific Research Station, Sweden on the 22nd to 24th of February 2007. PYRN (www.pyrn.org) is an international effort under the patronage of the International Permafrost Association (IPA) to bring young permafrost researchers together during the international polar year and beyond. The first phase of the PYRN project saw more than 300 young researchers from 31 countries join the network. It rapidly became the largest young researcher-driven network in the field of cryospheric science. PYRN offers, news, information and support to its members. It has sent 17 monthly newsletters since its start in 2005, maint...

The 2007-2008 International Polar Year (IPY) provides an international framework for improving our understanding of high-latitude climate change and enhancing our skill in predicting world-wide impacts. Recent, well documented observations of the dramatically changing high-latitude components of earth’s cryosphere (e.g., those areas where water is frozen either seasonally or permanently) make IPY science investigations particularly timely and relevant to scientists, policy makers and the general public. Effective IPY investigations require a range of commitments of resources: from providing support to individual field activities, to those which require the international coordination of complex systems and their operations. During IPY, to date considerable progress is being made towards characterisation of key high-latitude processes by means of spaceborne snapshots of the polar regions. A number of ongoing efforts are described below which are designed to coordinate these satellite acquisitions, to help demonstrate the benefits of a cryospheric observing system component, and to develop IPY data legacy comprising critical climate benchmarks.

Microorganisms – including algae, bacteria, fungi and viruses – are numerically by far the most important group of organisms in polar aquatic ecosystems. As well as being the main drivers of biogeochemical cycles and the major producers and consumers of greenhouse gases, they are also sensitive barometers of environmental change. Yet very little is known about their role in ecosystems or their response to change. Working in both the Arctic and Antarctic with a broad range of techniques, including state-of-the-art molecular methods, this project will assess the diversity and make up of this microbial world. It will significantly advance understanding of the diversity and activity of these organisms and their role in climate and global environmental change.

Terrestrial ecosystems in Arctic and Antarctic: effects of UV light, liquefying ice, and ascending temperatures (TARANTELLA)

Predicted changes in climate and ozone concentrations in the Polar Regions make it critically important to understand how changes in key environmental factors influence polar terrestrial ecosystems via the modification of their individual but interconnected components.

Observational and experimental research on the effect of climate change and ozone depletion is affiliated to international research programmes including the EBA, Evolution and Biodiversity in the Antarctic project, SCAR in the Antarctic, and in the Arctic to ITEX, International Tundra Experiment as well as IGBP-GCTE.

TARANTELLA aims to coordinate these studies by focusing on the experimental approach, in both the Arctic, in collaboration with ITEX, and in the Antarctic.

A common methodology is used, the so-called Open-Top Chambers (OTC) or small greenhouses for temperature manipulations; for UV-B field research, UV-B supplementation (lamps) and/or UV-B exclusion (foils), are used to experimentally establish varied UV-B levels.

Integrated Data and Information Services IPY projects cover a broad range of physical, life, and social sciences. The data from these projects will be unprecedented in their breadth and diversity and will be the primary legacy of IPY. Data management is the key to preserving and building on that legacy. The IPYDIS is the responsible for managing this immense and diverse volume of data and addressing substantial challenges in the evolution of scientific values, methods, and cooperation.

This project – which involves scientists from two dozen countries – will examine how atmospheric processes in the Southern Hemisphere affect current climate, and provide an important baseline for assessing future climate change. COMPASS will obtain the first circumpolar snapshot of the Southern Hemisphere atmospheric environment – covering physical, chemical and ecological properties – a major observational milestone. Only by harnessing the resources of the global polar community can this multinational project achieve the depth of investigation required to improve knowledge of future climate change and its impacts.

IceCube is a neutrino observatory for astrophysics to be installed at the South Pole over seven austral summers ending in 2011. IceCube will look for extremely high-energy neutrinos coming from the northern sky whose sources are active galactic nuclei, supernova remnents, gamma-ray bursts, and active supernovae. The IceCube In-Ice detector will consist of a minimum of 4800 optical modules deployed on 80 vertical strings buried 1450 to 2450 meters under the surface of the ice, and an IceTop surface air-shower detector array comprised of a minimum of 320 optical modules. By early 2008, one half of the detector, 40 strings with 2400 optical modules, was collecting, storing and analyzing data. Weekly updates during the austral season, November-January, are posted here.

IceCube is an international project sponsored and conducted by the United States and several non-U.S. countries. The United States National Science Foundation supplies funds for the design, development, fabrication, procurement, testing, drilling and operations of the project at the South Pole.