Content: 1. IPY after February 2009 2. Promoting your project in February, 2009 3. Polar Days 4. APECS 5. AGU Report Report no. 21, January 2009 From: IPY International Programme Office To: IPY Project Coordinators cc: IPY Community Google Groups 1. IPY after February 2009 Colleagues and friends regularly ask us what the "IPY plan" is for 2009 and 2010, and "What will happen to the IPO?". The answer for IPY varies by country and project. Some countries will hold closing events in February and March this year. Other national programmes will continue IPY research through Arctic 2009 and Antarctic 2009/2010 seasons and beyond, driven by financial and logist...

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...

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 ...

British Antarctic Survey, 29th April - 1st May 2009   The first in a series of themed events to be held over the next two years for early career polar researchers, this workshop will combine the themes of polar atmosphere and climate modelling. Career development sessions will be interspersed between lectures, practical sessions and problem solving workshops. Ideas for sessions are listed below - this unique event allows the participants to have a say in the programme to ensure it is as relevant as possible to those present.   All participants are encouraged to present a poster, and will be given the opportunity to help in the organisation of the workshop, such as by chairing sessions   This event is free for all members of the UK Polar Network...

In order to move work teams to the AGAP camps we must move everyone through the South Pole in order to acclimatize to the high altitude. This has presented a bottleneck of sorts, and along with other delays is putting the project considerably behind schedule. With equipment calibrated and people antsy to move out of McMurdo the next focus is how to move people through the next short stop at South Pole. A spreadsheet has been made and people have been moved back and forth on the sheet in response to weather delays and changing shifting. For days people have had bags sorted and checked waiting...

Mt. Erebus is unique in being the world’s southernmost active volcano. What also makes this volcano special is the long lived lava lake that has been in the crater ever since people have been looking there, and probably much longer. The lava lake in Mt. Erebus is similar to only two other volcanoes on earth, Nyiragongo, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Erta’Ale, in Ethiopia. But the formation of the crystals on Erebus is similar to a couple of other volcanoes, including Mt. Kenya. And to make it even more confusing, Erebus has a composition of lava that is similar to one of the deadliest volcanoes on earth, Mt. Vesuvius! You can begin to imagine why Mt. Erebus is such an interesting place to study. ...

For several years we have been preparing for what seems an incredibly small window of a field season. Working as part of a six nation team we have coordinated our equipment, our personnel, our science plans, and our logistics until it seems we will even breath at the appropriate time! Our project, Antarctic Gamburtsev Province (AGAP), will map through the ice of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, imaging the sleeping giant that lies below. This sleeping giant is a European Alp sized mountain range called the Gamburtsev Mountains, discovered 50 years ago by a team of Russian scientists as they traversed across this extensive ice sheet. Di...

Dr Mark Curran from the Australian Antarctic Division and ACE CRC talks about his role as an Ice Core scientist and the relationship between the ice core record and our climate.

Dr. Phil Kyle and Dr. Daria Zandomeneghi, both from the New Mexico Institute for Mining and Technology, are trying to "CT" scan the inside of Mt. Erebus using active seismic waves. As a teacher, I have been invited to assist with the experiment through the outreach program funded by the National Science Foundation. Over the past few weeks the team has been installing temporary seismometers at specific locations on the volcano. These seismometers create a grid of stations that will record seismic waves from explosive blasts set off at various locations. The blasts will generate "active" waves in the ground. They are active ...