STELLA ANTARCTICA is a 9-nation IPY project to investigate the feasibility of establishing an observatory at Dome C in Antarctica – potentially the best astronomical site in the world. The team will conduct several small-scale astronomical experiments at Dome C, as well as holding international discussions that could pave the way for an ambitious, multi-million Euro observatory at Dome C.

The Permafrost Young Researchers Network (PYRN) is hosting its kick-off meeting at the Abisko Scientific Research Station, Sweden on the 22nd to 24th of February 2007. PYRN (www.pyrn.org) is an international effort under the patronage of the International Permafrost Association (IPA) to bring young permafrost researchers together during the international polar year and beyond. The first phase of the PYRN project saw more than 300 young researchers from 31 countries join the network. It rapidly became the largest young researcher-driven network in the field of cryospheric science. PYRN offers, news, information and support to its members. It has sent 17 monthly newsletters since its start in 2005, maint...

The five members of the Svalbard Scientific Skiing Expedition, colloquially known as the “Frozen Five”, met in Grenoble last week for the final preparations before embarking on their 11 week voyage through the Arctic wilderness on the 29th March. We’re a group of graduate students of various geosciences that met at UNIS in Longyearbyen during our diverse university careers. From March-June 2007, we will be skiing across the length of Spitsbergen, Svalbard’s largest island. The route, measuring about 1000 km, will take us over numerous glaciers, patches of sea ice and through the territory of the polar bear. Through this expedition, we wish to share our passion for the Arctic regions with the general public and, in particular, high school students. Blo...

Last Saturday afternoon we passed 85 degrees north, the last circle of latitude marked on our chart before the North Pole. When plotting our position I had the impression of entering into a forbidden zone. This milestone is one that few vessels have passed before us, only ice breakers, Nansen on the Fram and the Russian vessel Sedov, and now Tara! And what a crossing of the line it was! Engulfed in the largest storm of the winter, with wind up to 60 knots from the south east, horizontal snow reducing visibility to nothing and the rigging on Tara resonating throughout the boat, we reached a speed of almost 1 knot. During the storm the barometer rose to 1040hpa with a rapid rise in temperature from -40?C to -15?C. For now our material on the ice has withstood the gale...

Imagine a giant meat locker. Now imagine three of them in a row. That's where several kilometers of ice from the deep drilling projects at Vostok and Dome C of the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica are stored outside of Grenoble, France. For my thesis work, I'm using these ice core records to reconstruct past climate conditions going back to 800,000 years ago. Unfortunately, by the time I started my thesis, these deep drilling projects were completed or nearly, so I didn't get a chance to make it out onto the ice. That's where the meat lockers come in. Several times a year I get to suit up and make my way past pallets of meat and cheese (this is France...

Looking for activities you might use in the classroom for the IPY launch? Check out the "Ice in the Solar System" Exploring Ice in the Solar System, a NASA-funded educational CD authored by Dr. Richard Shope from JPL and produced by Dr. Julie Edmonds at the Carnegie Academy for Science Education for the Carnegie Institutions of Washington MESSENGER and Astrobiology projects, was rated "outstanding" in a NASA space science education product review. Twelve conceptual change lessons spring out from the activated curiosity inspired by the central Ice Experience lesson, moving from exploring ice in everyday life, to ice at the Polar Regi...

ICEFISH: International Collaborative Expedition to collect and study Fish Indigenous to Sub-antarctic Habitat.

The Antarctic and the sub-Antarctic offer natural laboratories for understanding the evolutionary impact of climate changes on the marine polar fishes, but there has been lack of access to sub-Antarctic fishes, critical for understanding evolution, population dynamics, eco-physiology and eco-biochemistry of their Antarctic relatives. ICEFISH, the first comprehensive international survey of the Sub-Antarctic marine habitat, is designed to fill these gaps.

During the IPY, the USGS will highlight numerous long-term studies of the polar regions on the state of the cryosphere (glaciers, permafrost, sea ice), the impacts of change over the last few decades, the petroleum resource potential of the Arctic, and the consequences of permafrost thawing on the Yukon River watershed in Alaska and Canada. Also, we will produce a high resolution Landsat mosaic image of Antarctica.

SCAR-MarBIN supports the Antarctic science community by giving free and open access to an unprecedented mass of data relevant to understand Southern Ocean biodiversity. SCAR-MarBIN will leave a valuable legacy for future generations, in the form of an information tool that will provide a baseline reference for establishing a State of Antarctic Environment, and predicting the future for marine communities around Antarctica, which are currently facing global change.

Plate tectonics and polar ocean gateways: The keys to understanding long-term global change Water mass exchange between world oceans is of great significance for long-term global climatic change and is controlled by tectonic and sedimentary evolution of oceanic gateways and basins. Reconstructions of the geological history of polar oceanic basins and gateways feed into computer simulations of climate change. PLATES & GATES is an international program focussing on the tectonic and sedimentary formation of those areas of the Arctic and Antarctica which are in particular critical for global change.