The Greenland Ice Sheet is an outstanding archive of information about what the Earth’s climate was like in the past, and the water locked in its ice will have a major impact on sea level rise due to climate change. Because of this, understanding how Greenland will react to global warming is crucially important. By gathering seismic data, ice cores and using radar, laser ranging and echo sounders, this project will shed new light on the Greenland Ice Sheet and improve scientists’ ability to model how it will react to climate change.

International summit and working group conference on the development and deployment of energy resources in the Arctic including remote and rural villages Focusing on the Arctic as an emerging energy province, the Arctic Energy Summit is comprised of a web-based educational program, an international technology conference to be held in Anchorage, Alaska Oct. 14-18, 2007 and the creation of an arctic energy task force to develop a vision and programmatic way forward related to the development and deployment of Arctic energy.

Climate of the Arctic and its role for Europe/Arctic System Reanalysis The overall objective of IPY-CARE (International Polar Year - Climate of the Arctic and its Role for Europe) is to create, co-ordinate and prepare a Pan-European science and implementation plan for Arctic climate change and ecosystems research programme as contribution to the International Polar Year.

The Bering Sea is one of the world’s most productive marine environments. More than $1.5 billion worth of fish is caught there every year. The region is now undergoing alarming environmental changes, including climate change. The local indigenous peoples led by the Aleut International Association, have put together a monitoring project to assess the nature and extent of change. Rather than relying on high-tech remote sensing, the observations will mostly be done by indigenous peoples themselves, their intimate knowledge of their local areas providing them with a finely tuned ability to detect changes, however subtle. Observations will include the shift of southern species north, changes in distribution and abundance of fish and other temperature-sensitive species, changes in ice patterns, and weather observations.

The University of the Arctic (UArctic) will provide and coordinate IPY higher education and outreach activities and services. The UArctic IPY office is located at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Our aim is to provide opportunities for Arctic indigenous people and northern residents to be active IPY participants through UArctic education programs and IPY research projects. During IPY, UArctic’s objective is to increase the participation of indigenous people and northern residents of all ages in education and research, with the ultimate, longer-term goal of increasing their representation in the ranks of scholars who have attained the Ph.D.

Human Health in Arctic Regions The AHHI is an Arctic Council IPY (2007-2008) project that will focus on the health disparities that still exist among residents of Arctic communities when compared to communities in more temporate regions, and the human health challenges that are posed by climate change, environmental pollution, and sustainable development in Arctic regions. Research will be conducted in the US Arctic (Alaska), northern Canada, Greenland/Denmark, Iceland, Norway Finland, Sweden and northern Regions of the Russian Federation.

The Network for ARCtic Climate and Biological DIVersity Studies (ARCDIV) is a multidisciplinary international research initiative. The project explores the diversity of ecosystem on Arctic archipelago Svalbard, central part of Isfjorden, Billefjorden and Petuniabukta, by integrating existing and new intensive measurements of key biological and physical variables and processes.

We know that the Arctic exerts a critical influence on the Earth's climate and has done so for millions of years. Locked in Arctic ice and sediments are vital records of what the Earth's environment was like in the past. To more accurately predict the future of the Earth's climate, we need to know more about the extremes. Finding out how hot and how cold the Earth was in the past, and how much, as well as how little of it was covered by ice are key questions that APEX hopes to help answer.