Together with a team of scientists, University of Alaska's Matt Nolan has been spending the past 6 weeks on Alaska's McCall Glacier, extracting ice cores and installing thermistor string. And he's been blogging it, using some very innovative multimedia tools to bring home what life on the glacier is like. The main blogging challenge has been getting his posts, photos and videos from the glacier to your browser. Connections to the outside world are very sparse, so the first batch of blog posts and content, from April 22 to May 11, have only just now been delivered to www.IPY.org, via USB thumb drive flown back to civilization. The wait has been worth it: ...

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 ...

After a short period in the harbor of Punta Arenas, the German research icebreaker Polarstern will start for its next Antarctic Expedition. More than 40 scientists, students and technicians will be working on board until the middle of April. The two days stay in Punta Arenas were used to get all preparations done for the upcoming 12 weeks on sea. Containers were put on board or taken off, provisions were topped up and the fuel tanks were filled with 2,800 tonnes of diesel at the bunker pier "Cabo Negro" — rnough to keep the "Polarstern" running for 12 weeks and more. On February 1st all scientists and technicians finally arrived in Punta Arenas, and all were on board Polarstern by the next day. Passports were checked and collected by the first mate S...

The permafrost regions occupy 24% of the Northern Hemisphere’s land area and all glacier-free areas of the Antarctic continent. To obtain a snapshot of ground temperatures, thawing rates, and organic carbon contents of the permafrost regions, four coordinated IPY permafrost programmes are underway, involving 50 individual projects from 28 countries and hundreds of researchers and students. Geographically, the programme includes both polar regions and covers the mountains and plateau regions of the mid- and low-latitudes. The major focus of the programme is to observe and document current changes in permafrost conditions. These measurements serve as a baseline against which to evaluate future changes and to validate current models. Existing networks include boreholes for ...

What was life like on Norway's Svalbard Islands during the 1960s? Not as desolate as you might expect. But then again, this YouTube video may just have been rampant propaganda: As for the soundtrack, that was made by Frost, an aptly named Norwegian electro-pop outfit that wasn't even born at the time the above video was made. (...

You can track the Polarstern research vessel in a number of ways as it traverses Antarctic waters. You can view the raw coordinate data here on www.sailwx.info's tracking map. You can also track it in Google Earth by downloading this constantly updated file from the SCAR MarBIN portal. The file in turn accesses position data from this page on the Polar View website, which al...

HMS Endurance is an ice breaker in the service of the British Royal Navy. Every northern autumn she heads to Antarctica to support British Antarctic bases and projects. The ship has a website dedicated to it, Visit and Learn, which tracks its travels and posts updates on its doings. Now you can also track HMS Endurance in Google Earth. An enterprising coder has used the publicly available data on the website to create a constantly updated file pinpointing the ship's current and past locations on Google's popular virtual globe. Here's how to follow along with the HMS Endurance using Google Earth: If you haven't already done so, ...

If you're a lover of the novels of Magnus Mills, then you may have read his Explorers of the New Century, in which two rival expeditions traverse distinctly polar terrain. The expeditions are vying to be the first to arrive at the "Agreed Furthest Point" (AFP), the point furthest from civilization. Imagine my surprise to find out that there actually is such a point in real life, called the Southern Pole of Inaccessibility — it's the point on the Anta...

On March 1st, 2007, students around the world are participating in ice experiments to celebrate the launch of the International Polar Year. To show that you've taken part in some kind of IPY activity, launch a virtual balloon by following these simple instructions. You can visit the map with everyone's balloon markers on this site, or have it on your own website. Instructions for adding your own marker on the map: [Update: Be sure to use the "IPY" tag to add your balloon to the official map. (The test map used "ipylaunch2007".)] Step 1: Get a free account with Tagzania. Tagzania is a free location-tagging service. Once you have...

The Association of Polar Early Career Scientists aims to bring together young researchers and early career scientists with an interest in Polar Regions from around the world. Polar research is inherently interdisciplinary and international. Many early career scientists, although sometimes well connected within their own specialization, often do not have strong contacts with other polar experts. This network will provide a forum for polar scientists to begin international and interdisciplinary collaborations early in their careers, fostering international science which is naturally important to polar research to improve our understanding of these systems on a global level. Fo...