Screening of The Last Continent (dir. Jean Lemire), a fascinating documentary on climate change through a 430-day intense expedition in Antarctica. Québec Film Week December 12 & 14 Landmark’s Opera Plaza Cinema Tickets available here Filmmaker and marine biologist Jean Lemire (The White Planet) leads an intense 430-day expedition to Antarctica in this resonant documentary about a group of scientists investigating the effects of climate change. When the team arrives they discover that warmer temperatures causing upheavals in the ecosystem also threaten the safety of the crew members themselves. Awaiting the arrival of a desperately needed winter, they struggle to keep f...

We have been preparing for a week to move to our deep field location: Tango 1. Tango 1 is a camp deep in the Transantarctic Mountains about 800 miles from the McMurdo Station. The camp will need to be fully erected, meaning that three us of us will precede the majority of the team by three days to create the camp we will be working out of for a couple of weeks. This is going to be a completely new Antarctic experience for me. My previous work in the Dry Valleys was remote in the sense that we were not at the research station, but we were always less than a 45-minute helicopter flight from resources. Tango 1 is truly going to be a deep field experience. I am very much looking forward to being there, and excited to be on the advance team… I mean isn’t this one of the reaso...

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 ...

The Royal Society of Victoria, involved on polar (Antarctic) science since 1874 is conducting a flight to the South Magnetic Pole on 17 January 2009, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the first party (Australians Prof. Edgeworth David and Douglas Mawson and Scotsman Dr Alistair Mackay) to locate the Magnetic Pole in January 1909. The 12 hour return flight ex Sydney and Melbourne has been arranged as an in-flight scientific program with international scientists presenting papers. Also onboard the 350 seat aircraft will be 60 final year students as "young science ambassadors" drawn from schools from all Australian States, New Zealand, Canada, Finland and the United Kingdom. A few seats are still available for interested scientists. Contact details:...

Greetings. This is my first official day at the main US research base in Antarctica-McMurdo Station. I am very excited to start bringing you the stories of POLENET science and what life is like as we do our work from one of the most remote places on the face of the planet. This season a small contingent of researchers from multiple universities will be working to install and maintain very high precision global positioning systems and seismometers. It is our goal within POLENET to cover a large portion of the continent with these sensors to begin to understand the science of interaction between the great ice sheets and the earth below. This understanding is vital to understand the historical relationship of the ice and the rock in the past as a window of what to expect in the...

In the lead-up to the December 4th Above The Poles Day, Tamsin Gray tells us about her job launching weather balloons in Antarctica. This is connected to the IPY Weather Observation Activity. image: Dean Evans, Halley Research Station, Antarctica Tamsin Gray works for the British Antarctic Survey...

IPY Report: November 2008 1. Conferences and Workshops 2. Above The Poles 3. Norway 2010: thanks for submissions 4. APECS 5. IPY in photos: share your images 6. Polar Books Report no. 19, November 2008 From: IPY International Programme Office To: IPY Project Coordinators cc: IPY Community Google Groups 1. Conferences and Workshops The completion of field campaigns in IPY necessarily means an increase in workshops to discuss the outcomes. Please check the calendar on http://ipy.arcticportal.org for workshop information, and send any information about workshops for the calendar t...

It’s no coincidence that one of the least explored places on Earth is the deep interior of Antarctica. Most established research stations are along the coast. For a number of reasons, it can be extremely expensive to fly into the interior. Now, climate scientists are beginning to worry that a part of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet far from the coast and with a base far below sea level might be much more vulnerable to climate change than previously thought. If true, it might hold the potential to raise sea level significantly. So there is intense interest in collecting data from this remote area. Beginning this December, th...

Mosaic of Antarctica: a visual Installation of Glass Maps By polar artist Lucinda Wilkinson Mosaic of Antarctica is a visual installation comprising of at least 30 glass maps showing detailed areas of the Antarctic ice sheets and sea ice, highlighting the changing patterns of ice in its accumulation and discharge due to environmental warming. In the production of this installation explored areas have been transcripted onto glass panels using imagery from Mosaic of Antarctica (Radarsat and Modis) and the new satellite data Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica (LIMA). This is the most detailed map produced yet from sc...

Later this month teams of scientists, engineers, pilots and support staff from British Antarctic Survey (BAS), USA, Germany, Australia, China and Japan will join forces for one of the most scientifically, technically ambitious and physically demanding Antarctic projects yet to be undertaken. The mission of this International Polar Year (IPY) project is to uncover secrets of the enigmatic Gamburtsev subglacial mountains that are buried by up to 4 km of ice; to hunt for the oldest ice on our planet; to study subglacial lakes and to discover new clues of past, present and future climate change. The Gamburtsev subglacial mountains are thought to be the birthplace of the vast East Antarctic Ice Sheet. This project will reveal clues to how the mountains were formed ...