Our five month expedition to arctic Alaska began today with our first stop at Kaktovik, Alaska. Kaktovik is a village of about 300 people, mostly native Alaskans, on the coast of the Arctic Ocean. It’s actually located on an island, separated by a small strip of water from the mainland, but in winter it is all frozen so it is essentially connected. Turner “Is there enough room for me in the car?” No one had much sleep lately. ...

Hello, everyone-- The departure date for my Antarctic voyage is rapidly approaching (May 26). Preparations are well underway, with many last-minute items to attend to. I'm posting to my two blogs as often as I can ("Rime of the Modern Mariner" for teens and up, and "Unarctica" for middle-graders). Some of what I'm writing about now is personal preparations, and some is about preparations the researchers are making. My most recent "Unarctica" post is about Chaiten volcano, which we may be seeing from the airplane on our flight southward from Santiago to Punta Arenas to catch the NSF icebreaker that will be our home for a month. Most recent "Rime" post concerns the radio-controlled airplane the researchers will use for reconaissance and planting GPS beacons on i...

From May 15-24, 2008, science centers worldwide are joining forces with local students for an international, educational event about the importance of the Polar ice caps. To fully understand how these regions are critical to helping the Earth maintain its climate through their reflection of the sun's rays (a process called albedo), youngsters will create large white spots using available material. At a scheduled time determined by optimum overpass angle, NASA satellites will pass overhead, measuring the reflectivity of these white spots and recording images of the white spots. On June 9, the World Ocean Network will participate in the Albedo Experiment as part of its World Ocean Week closing ceremony. ...

By Jonathan Amos Science reporter, BBC News, San Francisco US scientists have reconstructed a 40,000-year record of wind conditions at the South Pole. They assembled the climate data by measuring the distribution of dust layers seen in two ice boreholes. A comparison of the layers allowed the University of California-Berkeley team to gauge how rough snow surfaces would have been in ancient times. The researchers then used this "proxy" to assess the probable strength of wind needed to produce those features. The technique needs refinement and works best in the deeper parts of the ice. Nonetheless, scientists are confident it gives at least a broad record of conditions at the pole some 30,000 to 70,000 years a...

The previously untold complete story of the first vessel to reach the North Pole, the nuclear submarine USS Nautilus, will be released in July 2008 by Thomas Nelson Publishers. The book is written by Captain William Anderson, the captain of Nautilus for the trip, and by best-selling author Don Keith. THE ICE DIARIES tells the inside story of how Nautilus made three attempts to reach the North Pole beneath the polar ice pack. The first two almost ended tragically. The third attempt took the submarine and her crew of 116 through the North Pole, from Pacific to Atlantic, in late July and early August 1958 via the long sought Northwest Passage. The data collected about navigation in those high latitudes, the oceans, the sea bottom, and the pack ice contributed mightily to future exploration of...

The latest edition of field notes, the magazines of CH2M HILL's Polar Field Services, is out. In this issue (PDF): Learn how Shari Gearheard, a research scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder's National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSDIC), is combining the rich ecological knowledge of the Inuit with scientific investigations to better understand just how the sea ice in three arctic communities is changing. Read about how Fairbanks residents celebrated their frozen habitat ...

In about 48 hours we leave Fairbanks for five months of research on McCall Glacier and its neighbors in the Alaskan Arctic. For the past few months we have been making plans, shipping tons of gear, and looking forward to an exciting field season. As usual with any big project, we have encountered numerous obstacles, delays, set-backs, and triumphs. But the preparations are nearly finished now and we’re ready to face the next set of challenges. All of our field logistics are handled by small fixed wing aircraft, like this Beaver flown by Dirk Nickisch. This photo was taken a few weeks ago when we confi...

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.

On Tuesday, April 8, middle- and high-school students from Fairbanks, Shageluk and Wasilla, Alaska, will join with students from the other end of the globe, in Ushuaia, Argentina, in a live two-hour videoconference that is part of International Polar Year (IPY) activities at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF). The students will respond to a focus question about the important seasonal indicators in their area (such as budburst, leaves changing colors, or river/lake freeze-up or break-up), and how those indicators may be impacted by climate change. They will then discuss their answers with each other and with several arctic and antarctic scientists who will be on hand. This videoconference, similar to one that was held a year ago on the UAF campus, is part of an Internat...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 4, 2008 Children near both poles will have a chance to talk to each other and scientists about changes they are seeing in their own environments and how people are adapting to those changes during an International Polar Year pole-to-pole videoconference Tuesday, April 8, at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Through the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment program, known as GLOBE, students in Fairbanks, Shageluk and Wasilla, Alaska will exchange their research ideas and interact with students from Ushuaia, Argentina, as well as with scientists from Alaska, Colorado and Argentina. The exchange is part of the IPY GLOBE Seasons and Biomes project, which trains K-12 teachers and students ...