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.

The Arctic Portal provides a comprehensive gateway to the Arctic on the internet, increases co-operation between both public and private parties across the Arctic and grants exposure to Arctic related information.

The goal of SPARC-IPY, who's full title is: The Structure and Evolution of the Polar Stratosphere and Mesosphere and Links to the Troposphere during IPY, is to document the dynamics, chemistry and microphysical processes within the polar vortices during IPY, with a focus on the stratosphere-troposphere and stratosphere-mesosphere coupling. One of the key outcomes will be a collection of analysis products from several operational centres and several research centres, which will be archived at the SPARC Data Center. The analysis products will cover the period of IPY (March 2007 to March 2009) and will represent the best available self-consistent approximations to the state of the atmosphere during this period.

For 61 weeks thousands of people around the world will follow, on a daily basis via the internet, the exciting voyage of the three-masted sailing ship SEDNA as she travels to Antarctica.

Cape Farewell brings artists, scientists and educators together to bring about long-term change in cultural attitudes towards climate change. Created by artist David Buckland in 2001, Cape Farewell has lead three expeditions to the High Arctic, the frontline of climate change. From these expeditions has sprung an extraordinary body of artwork, a film co-produced by the BBC, Cape Farewell’s first major book title, The CD ARCTIC by Max Eastley, educational resources for GCSE Geography and Science and a UN award winning website. The project is widely acknowledged to be the most significant sustained artistic response to climate change anywhere in the world.

The Arctic sea ice cover is undergoing significant climate-induced changes, resulting in a reduction in ice extent and a net thinning of the sea ice cover. During IPY researchers from 10 nations will be studying the properties and processes that govern this sea ice cover and exploring its role as an indicator and amplifier of climate change. Numerous techniques will be brought to bear on this task, including expeditions, satellite remote sensing, autonomous rovers, buoys, ocean moorings, and numerical models.

The 2007-2008 International Polar Year (IPY) provides an international framework for improving our understanding of high-latitude climate change and enhancing our skill in predicting world-wide impacts. Recent, well documented observations of the dramatically changing high-latitude components of earth’s cryosphere (e.g., those areas where water is frozen either seasonally or permanently) make IPY science investigations particularly timely and relevant to scientists, policy makers and the general public. Effective IPY investigations require a range of commitments of resources: from providing support to individual field activities, to those which require the international coordination of complex systems and their operations. During IPY, to date considerable progress is being made towards characterisation of key high-latitude processes by means of spaceborne snapshots of the polar regions. A number of ongoing efforts are described below which are designed to coordinate these satellite acquisitions, to help demonstrate the benefits of a cryospheric observing system component, and to develop…

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.

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.