The Arctic Social Indicators (ASI) project is an IPY project and is following up on the activities of the Arctic Human Development Report (AHDR), and is initiated by the Stefansson Arctic Institute, Akureyri, Iceland, which also hosts the secretariat. ASI has been endorsed by the Arctic Council.

Notes from Summit Station, Greenland: The spring equinox approaches, but up at Summit, the only thing blooming is the fern frost on the windows of this US National Science Foundation-operated research outpost. Still, signs of spring and the coming research period abound: brightening skies, a lengthy list of pre-season tasking, and, above all, the arrival last month of the phase-three winter crew. Like the few scouts who precede the swallows to San Juan Capistrano, this team focuses on readying the place for the coming legion of scientists. We asked manager Ken Jessen to tell us how the team is getting along. He offers a glimpse of what it’s like to be part of a foursome stashed away on the Greenland ice cap at the dawn of the second half of the fourth IPY....

Gallery SPOT features the painter Pierre Auzias, the photographer Martin Lehmann and the filmmaker Bertrand Lozay in the art installation: Slush! Artistic reflections on the increasing global temperature in Greenland Launching Saturday, March 1. From 2 - 5 pm. The exhibition runs to March 30, 2008. The exhibition operates in two levels, connecting both to the physical gallery space as well as to the social and psychological space of Greenland. By embracing a variety of different media and symbolic effects, the exhibition demonstrates current identity and environmental issues in Greenland. During the opening show Pierre Auzias is working in an interdisciplinary manner, creating a site specific installation. Auzias´...

The IPY International Programme Office (IPO) has recently received some sponsorship to seed a meeting of the IPY International Youth Steering Committee (IYSC), including the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS). This meeting will occur in Stockholm at the end of September. Below is background material for this meeting. Meeting Details (252 KB DOC) includes participants, overview, agenda, and logistics Planning Information and Summary (128 KB PDF) APEC...

September is a great time to study Sea Ice, in both the Arctic and the Antarctic. Below are details of three expeditions happening at the moment that welcome contact from press and educators. Antarctic Sea Ice in IPY (ASPECT) (IPY Project 141) ASPeCT has a number of associated expeditions investigating Sea Ice. These include: SIPEX: Sea Ice Physics and Eco-system eXperiment SIPEX website International SIPEX flyer (44KB PDF) ...

Submitted September 7: A dirty little secret. Its 95 degrees Fahrenheit outside just now. I guess I am not in Tasilliq anymore! The last weekend we waited for the weather to clear but the view was the same as always - rain and fog. Sunday wasn't even nice, a change for the books. Monday was worse! It was snowy and rainy. I had booked a ticket to leave Tasilliq on wednesday so we hoped that Tuesday would be better. When I woke up on Tuesday morning the view was blue skies, no clouds and majestic snow capped mountains all around. The autumn was officially here, and frosty nights would be coming very soon. Tuesday was my last chance to go and finish off the two sites to the south that had not had enough batteries installed. ...

We’re still not done. As always the weather has been unfriendly – rain and snow the other day, but now the mountains are quite lovely with their slight dusting of snow. Summer has finished and winter is fast approaching. There’s a nice high pressure over the ice sheet and some nice lows offshore, so although the views are incredible, so are the winds, which are ferocious at the places we want to go. With the 222 helicopter disappearing to Nuuk to get new engines we now have to slot our work timetable into the 212's scheduled visits to the Kulusuk airport to pick up passengers and its scheduled, lifeline visits to outlying communities. If we had the work we think we could be put out in the morning and get picked up in the evening but we cannot really work in that mode ...

The site we installed at Koge Bugt was incomplete. The kind of helicopter we used meant that we just couldn’t take all the batteries with us. It's still running on a single battery just now, which won’t do much good with winter fast approaching. We’re going to need a second trip out there to put more batteries in. We started planning to do that over the next couple of days. Because, you know? What could go wrong? In the meantime more people we know had arrived in Angmassalik, and were staying at the Hotel Nansen. The hotel is owned by the same people as the one we’re in (I think) but allows you to cook for yourself. So Abbas was basically press ganged into cooking a curry, with pakora no less, for everyone. Thomas made a Swedish apple pie and I threw together a sala...

Submitted September 2: So its been a long time since I wrote anything, or at least it feels like a long time. To be blunt, not a huge hell of a lot has happened since then. The main feature has been rain, a little more rain and then some more rain, followed by rain and a little bit of wind. We have managed to get another site installed and partially installed a couple of other sites, but weather has not been friendly. I think we last left off on the 23rd of August, something to do with a boat trip to Isertoq if I can remember that far back correctly. That was over a week ago, so what has happened since then? Hmm. We fixed the antenna at the Helheim site, same kind of deal as the last visit to Helheim, crammed into a 212 helicopter this time. The first and only time we've be...

Submitted by Mike Willis on Monday, Aug 27: There's something about what's happening here In Greenland. I keep having unforgettable days. On Thursday we changed our modus operandi in a direction I really did not expect. The helicopters were totally booked up with shuttle service to Kulusuk and for some more local science projects up on the Helheim Glacier. Abbas the ever inventive therefore chartered a boat to take us to Isortoq, about 20 minutes by helicopter to the south, but 2 hours by boat. Again here in Greenland we had another absolutely unforgettable day. With help from Meredith Nettles from L...