Cape Farewell Education aims to: facilitate learning about climate change and participation in the climate change debate among teachers and pupils in UK schools. give school students a voice in the climate change debate and to enable them to take what they have learnt and talked about back home into their communities and families spread enthusiasm and strategies for learning about climate change throughout UK schools. We have a number of resources available to teachers and pupils Life in the Water is a GSCE Science resource commissioned by Nuffield Curriculum Centre and developed with scientists at the National Oceanographic Centre, Southampton as part of the 21st centu...

International Polar Year (IPY), which extends from March 2007 through to March 2009, is a worldwide initiative involving thousands of scientists from over 60 countries and focuses on both the Arctic and Antarctic regions. Although it is called

Children in Kent will be the first to take part in a unique educational project to link schools in Britain with those in the Arctic. The project, called "Arctic Voice", aims to teach children at both primary and secondary level about the effects of climate change and the impact it is having on the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of the Arctic. Schools will be linked through the Internet, allowing children in Kent and elsewhere in the UK the opportunity to talk directly to Inuit school children in Greenland and Arctic Canada, and so begin a dialogue between their communities. The project is supported by Jonathon Porritt, the head of the government's sustainable development commission, who describ...

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, ...

The goal of SPARC-IPY, who's full title is: The Structure and Evolution of the Polar Stratosphere and Mesosphere and Links to the Troposphere during IPY, is to document the dynamics, chemistry and microphysical processes within the polar vortices during IPY, with a focus on the stratosphere-troposphere and stratosphere-mesosphere coupling. One of the key outcomes will be a collection of analysis products from several operational centres and several research centres, which will be archived at the SPARC Data Center. The analysis products will cover the period of IPY (March 2007 to March 2009) and will represent the best available self-consistent approximations to the state of the atmosphere during this period.

For 61 weeks thousands of people around the world will follow, on a daily basis via the internet, the exciting voyage of the three-masted sailing ship SEDNA as she travels to Antarctica.