Dr Eric Wolff is the 2009 recipient of the prestigious Louis Agassiz Medal awarded by the European Geosciences Union (EGU). SciencePoles recently interviewed Dr Wolff on the subject of climate cycles and the quest for million year old ice. A veteran of 6 Antarctic seasons and 2 Greenland seasons, Dr Wolff has been working for the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) for over twenty years, and played a central role in the extremely important European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (EPICA). A leading expert in the study of the chemical composition of snow cover and ice cores and their use...

More than fifty years ago, the research programme of the International Geophysical Year 1957-1958 included no social science research projects at all. However this was not the case for the International Polar Year 2007-2008 thanks to the efforts of the social science community to be included in the latest IPY.Not only have social scientists carried out a number of studies focusing on various issues that concern indigenous Arctic communities (most notably climate change); they have also encouraged natural scientists to include members of indigenous communities in the Arctic in their research...

A veteran of over 50 research expeditions in Antarctica, the Arctic, the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau, Professor Mayewski is one of the world's leading glaciologists and climatologists. Also Director of the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine, he has published over 300 papers on climate-related research and co-authored The Ice Chronicles, a book that captures the adventure of scientific research in remote reaches of the Earth and relates important new breakthroughs in the understanding of climate change. In the first interview published on SciencePoles, ...

To mark the end of the 4th International Polar Year's official research period on the 28th of February 2009, and in parallel to the publication of "The State of Polar Research", SciencePoles interviewed Dr David Carlson, Director of the IPY International Programme Office (IPO) about the IPY, its achievements, its limitations and its legacies. What would the science community and the general public have missed out on if thi...

Picture: International Polar Foundation / R. Robert On February 15th, 2009, the Brussels-based International Polar Foundation (IPF) officially inaugurated the new Princess Elisabeth Antarctica Station, the very first Antarctic research station ever designed and built to run entirely on renewable solar and wind energies. The new "zero emission" Belgian research station is the only research platform completed during the fourth International Pola...

The fourth International Polar Year has led to the creation of a number of new projects and initiatives, many of which will continue after the IPY officially comes to an end in March 2009. One of these initiatives, the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS), which sprang from the IPY Youth Steering Committee, (IPY project n° 168), has grown in size and stature in three short years. Since APECS founders Dr. Jenny Baeseman and Hugh Lantuit decided in 2006 to create an organisation aimed at helping...

Having been able to survive in the harsh Arctic climate for millennia, indigenous Northern communities have extensive intimate knowledge about the Arctic ecosystems in which they live. Increasingly, researchers are taking advantage of this wealth of knowledge to help them study the ecosystems of the Far North and how climate change is affecting them. One programme to monitor ice cover being run by the Nunavik Research Centre (NRC), the research arm of Québec's ...

Continuing his coverage of the 25th Chinese Antarctic Expedition, science journalist Jean de Pomereu reports on the departure of the Dome Argus (Dome A) traverse team from the Chinese Zhongshang Station in the Antarctic on the International Polar Foundation's SciencePoles website. On 18 December following an official departure ceremony, a team of 28 men left Zhongshang to start the 1,220 km traverse into the interior of Antarctica to Dome A, the highest point on the East Antarc...

Zhongshan Station serves as the logistical hub of Chinese scientific research activities in East Antarctica and in the near future it will be a support platform for the new Kunlun Station to be constructed at Dome A. Situated in a small ice-free coastal region between the ice sheet and the ocean, Zhongshan Station serves as a base for scientists conducting research at the station and out in the field. In his latest report, SciencePoles reporter Je...

SciencePoles science journalist Jean de Pomereu is currently aboard the research and logistics ice breaker, the Xue Long (Snow Dragon), covering the 25th Chinese Antarctic expedition (CHINARE). As the first ever non-Chinese journalist allowed to take part in a Chinese Antarctic expedition, Mr. de Pomereu will document this season’s expedition with regularly published articles on the International Polar Foundation's SciencePoles website. With 204 participants led by Professor Huigen Yang, developments during this year’s CHINARE expedition will be very interesting to follow as researchers conduct 36 different science programmes in fields ranging from marine ...