Tuesday, 20 Nov 2007 3177 meters above sea level. After a late arrival last night, we slept for an extra hour or two to get ready for the day ahead. We are now at Site I, which is our first stop where we do more than a few hours of science; in fact we plan to spend a full day and a half here. Today gave everyone a chance to work on the traveling conditions in the modules, vehicles and science gear. In particular, Helgard and Karsten took the opportunity to fix radar antennas that had been acting up in the last few days; Atsu worked at getting a measurement of the firn temperature at 10 meters depth; Stian replaced the power supply in one of the UAVs; Mary made measurements of the physical properties on the top 2 meters of the firn, and Glen, Tom, Lou a...

Submitted: Saturday, Nov. 17, 2007 Position: -72.7116, 3.7829 Altitude: 2786m Air temperature (22:20 local time): -27.2 degrees C Today we made another good progress distance wise, covering nearly 70 km. And the science is in full swing too! Helgard and Karsten have been collecting data since the start of the traverse using their radar equipments but today Glen and Mary started making their measurements as well. Glen is interested in the evolution of topographical features on the ice sheet and made surface roughness measurements. Mary, with helping hands of Tom and Lou, collected two 50 cm snow core...

Submitted Friday, Nov. 16, 2007 Altitude: 2400m Air temperature (23:00 local time): -21 degrees C It was the long awaited day for us all, the departure of our traverse from Troll Station. At 10:10, the traverse train started rolling under a beautiful Antarctic blue sky. Emotion of team members were a mix of the excitement of embarking on a journey we have been preparing for more than 2 years, and sentimentality, to say good bye to people of Troll station who were so generous and provided us with all the helping hands we needed. Today we gained almost 1200m in altitude, from ~1250m at Troll to 2400m at the camp site. At some of steep climbs we had to get through today, one vehicle was caught in soft snow and needed a towing support by another one....

An immediate reduction of methane, tropospheric ozone and black carbon may delay the melting of the Arctic, is the unanimous recommendation from a group of leading climate scientists after an international conference in Oslo, Norway. The 2nd Short-lived Pollutants and Arctic Climate Workshop, gathering 40 leading climate scientists from Europe, Asia and the U.S., was hosted by the Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU) in Oslo, Norway, 5-7 November. Reductions in the atmospheric burden of CO2 are the backbone of any meaningful effort to mitigate climate forcing. But, even if swift and deep reductions were made, given the long lifetime of CO2, the reductions may not be achieved in time to delay a rapid melting of the Arctic. Hence, the goal of constraini...

This week, a Nordic tissue paper company called Metsa? Tissue, launched it's campaign announcing a one million kronor donation to IPY. The majority of these funds were directed to the IPY project, KINNVIKA , but about one third was used to support the first meeting of the International Youth Steering Committee and Association of Polar Early Career Scientists. The meeting was essential for bringing together key volunteers who have been working hard over the last two years to establish an international network of polar researchers, and aspiring polar researchers, between the undergraduate and early-career stages of their careers. At the meeting, the two groups agreed to merge under the common title: APECS, Association of Polar E...

"Never give up your dreams". Jean-Louis Etienne — the French doctor and explorer — knows more than anyone what these words mean; for four years he has been involved with the Total Pole Airship project, which aims to fly a blimp over the Arctic ocean and the North Pole, measuring the thickness of the sea ice with an instrument designed by the Alfred-Wegener Institute. Last Friday, October 12, Jean-Louis Etienne could finally smile. The expedition blimp was inaugurated during a ceremony in Marseille — it was christened Total Pole Airship, after the sponsor Total. The blimp arrived in France from Russia (whe...

Educational posters for the International Polar Year: First announcement, and call for partnerships UNEP/GRID-Arendal For further information, please go to: http://polar.grida.no/ipyposters UNEP Key Polar Centre at UNEP/GRID-Arendal has received support from the Research Council of Norway (Forskningsradet) to prepare a set of posters for the International Polar Year (IPY). This project supports the education, outreach, and communication efforts of IPY. The posters will primarily present polar science and issues and secondarily create awareness of IPY and its research activities. The main objective is to try to answer the question: Why, and how, are the ...

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...

Submitted by Karl Torstein Hetland Project manager K12, IPY Norway "Thank you for some fantastic days at Svalbard" "The teacher workshop at Svalbard was very inspiring" "This was a fantastic workshop - I feel filled with energy and experience - wonderful colleagues (Danish participant)" This was some of the feedback we got from the teacher workshop at Svalbard, which 22 Norwegian and 5 Danish teachers attended for a week in August. There were not many hours to be alone during the week, but it was always daylight so it was not too busy. The workshop started in Oslo with polar history at the Fram museum and the ...

Five research ships with scientists from 16 countries are currently in the Arctic performing groundbreaking research to better understand climate changes. The European Union Programme DAMOCLES (Developing Arctic Modelling and Observing Capabilities for Long-term Environment Studies), which is part of the International Polar Year, is concerned with the potential for a significantly reduced sea ice cover, and the impacts this might have on the environment and human activities, both regionally and globally. -Polarstern reports: The sea ice is getting thinner- Large areas of the Arctic sea ice are now only one metre deep, which means the thickness of the ice has halved since 2001, initial findings from the research ship Polarste...