February 17, 2009 — FAIRBANKS, Alaska — The Greening of the Arctic (GOA) IPY initiative is comprised of four projects each contributing to documenting, mapping and understanding the rapid and dramatic changes to terrestrial vegetation expected across the circumpolar Arctic as a result of a changing climate. These changes will likely affect the permafrost, active layer, carbon reserves, trace-gas fluxes, hydrological systems, biodiversity, wildlife populations and the human habitability of Arctic ecosystems, says GOA principal investigator Donald “Skip” Walker, director of the Institute of Arctic Biology’s ...

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 ...

“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 ...

Permafrost research makes you happy Photo: Dominik Langhamer Thanks to Hanne H. Christiansen from UNIS for the text of this clog, sent from the field. To follow their adventures or get more details about the course have a look at www.tspnorway.com ! In just one long day 10 m of mainly frozen sediment cores were collected from 4 different parts of the landscape here in NE Greenland using hand held drilling machines. Thermistor strings were installed down to 3.2 m below the terrain surface in the deepest hole. This was done by the Interna...

From the mountains to the coast - the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research based in Bremerhaven inherits the World Radiation Monitoring Center, Switzerland The international archive for radiation data, the World Radiation Monitoring Center (WRMC), provides climate research with high-precision meteorological series of measurements. After a term of fifteen years at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ), the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association ensures the successful continuity and enhancements of this unique archive. These data serve the monitoring of the climate, the surveillance of anthropological influence on the earth's surface as well as the improvement of climate forecasts. ...

On March 1 2007, students at schools around the world marked the advent of International Polar year by conducting an ice experiment. They then told the IPY community and the world by pinning a virtual balloon onto a web-based map showing exactly where they were. It proved to be quite a success, with hundreds of schools contributing so far. IPY enthusiasts also joined in, turning the map into a riot of red balloons. See the whole map here. For technical reasons, browsers don't like it if you show too many balloons at one time, so only the most recent 200 balloons are shown. However, you can see all contributed posts directly by browsing the directory from ...

The International Polar Year has begun. What a week! With US and UK launches on the Monday stirring up media attention, followed by an event in Portugal on the Wednesday and over 20 more national events on the day itself, March 1st 2007, we definitely hit the news! While traveling to Paris with Nicola, to prepare for the international launch, the phone didn't stop ringing, both sides of the Channel Tunnel and even on the Paris subway system! I was contacted by journalists as diverse as New Zealand Radio, an In-flight magazine, BBC World Service, Vatican Radio, Al Jazeera English, an Italian science magazine, Chinese TV networks, and Scientific American to name a few. During the International Ceremony itself, my phone kept shaking, and afterwards, on a tour of Paris, I saw ...

Thank-you to everyone who was involved with launch events, who launched virtual balloons, who launched real balloons (see the Swedish launch web-cast!), those behind the scenes, and those on stage. IPY Celebrations around the world on March 1st, and throughout this week, have been a huge success. You can watch those you missed on the Arctic Portal, or still launch your virtual balloon now, and throughout IPY, to recognise the importance of the polar regions to the whole planet. Here is a map showing balloons that have been launched around the world (you can zoom in on where you live or zoom out to see the world map!): ...

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, ...