What's it like to be a research scientist working in the Arctic and Antarctica? In celebration of the International Polar Year, the Exploratorium gave polar scientists cameras and blogs and asked them to document their fieldwork in real time. The result is a groundbreaking Web-based project, Ice Stories: Dispatches from Polar Scientists (http://icestories.exploratorium.edu), where you can follow along on the scientists’ research, ask questions, and share ...

In the International Polar Year, many people try to help with focusing on polar science. On June 26, we had a visit of Royal ambassadors, the heirs of the Scandinavian thrones: Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, Crown Prince Frederick of Danmark and Crown Prince Haakon from Norway. They were on a boat trip with the Swedish ice breaker Oden and arrived per helicopter. There was a program with informal presentations and an excursion to the Zeppelin and marine station. During the city walk, they visited the Netherlands Arctic Station. Victoria immediately noticed my wooden shoes. On the picture from left to right: Crown Prince Haakon of Norway, the Governor of Svalbard (Sysselmannen), Oddvar Midtkandal (director of Kings Bay), Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, Kim Holm...

An international team of researchers was able to provide evidence of explosive volcanism in the deeps of the ice-covered Arctic Ocean for the first time. Researchers from an expedition to the Gakkel Ridge, led by the American Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), report in the current issue of the journal Nature that they discovered, with a specially developed camera, extensive layers of volcanic ash on the seafloor, which indicates a gigantic volcanic eruption. ³Explosive volcanic eruptions on land are nothing unusual and pose a great threat for whole areas,² explains Dr Vera Schlindwein of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association. She participated in the expedition as a geophysicist and has been, together with her tea...

From April to September 2008, University of Alaska Fairbanks researcher Matt Nolan is living on McCall Glacier in Northern Alaska with his wife, son and fellow researchers, subjecting the glacier to a battery of tests... and blogging the process. Because McCall Glacier is so remote, he’s only able to send his blog entries by plane every few weeks or so. We’ve just received — and posted — the most recent batch. You can access all of Matt’s posts via this link. What makes Matt’s posts so interesting is that he uses an assortment of multimedia tools to get his message across. Not “just” text and photos, but also video (posted to YouTube and embedded here on IPY.org)...

The Arctic field season is now in full flow.. IPY researchers are busy in Northern Canada, Alaska, Greenland, Russia, Scandinavia, and the Arctic Ocean. They are also, like their Antarctic colleagues, committed to public outreach. So where are the stories? Well.. they're just starting to come in, as the researchers return to a more-connected world. This image shows BAS personnel Crispin Day (left), Richard Hindmarsh (centre) and Fabien Gillet (right) who went to NSF Summit Station in Greenland to deploy the BAS phase-sensitive radar (pRES). This measures deformation in ice, and the team will exploit a glaciological phenomenon known as the "Raymond Effect" to achieve a high-accuracy determination of the viscosity (stickiness) of ice. Knowledge of this is essential in predi...

Sooty particles emitted during the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels (petroleum, coal), biofuels, and biomass (wood, animal dung, etc.) can do more than just create unsightly pollution and provoke respiratory problems. Known within the scientific community as black carbon, research and modelling conducted in recent years shows that this dark-coloured aerosol has been playing a significant role in climate warming through its absorption of solar radiation. Its impact is heaviest in the cryosphere, where its presence can reduce snow albedo and can lead to faster melting of snow on land and on sea ice. ...

There are three graduate students on this trip: Darek Ignatiuk, Ryo Kusaka, and Jason Geck. Our project is part of the IPY Glaciodyn effort, an international project focusing on the role of arctic glaciers in the global system, involving more than a dozen countries. To facilitate exchange of ideas and comparisons between glacier systems, as part of this larger project we try to exchange personnel on field trips whenever possible, and Darek and Ryo are part of that exchange. Darek is from Poland and is a graduate student at the University of Silesia in Katowice, studying under Dr. Jacek Jania. His interests are broadly based but have an emphasis on surface energy and mass balance. His primary glacier field work has been in Svalbard, working on glaciers around the Polish Polar...

With the deep drilling finished, it was time to start transitioning fully into our process studies on McCall Glacier. What we are particularly interested in this year is the fate of surface snow melt. How much of this drips into the snow pack and refreezes? How much reaches the bottom the glacier and helps the glacier move faster? To answer these questions we are planning to track this meltwater throughout the year. We will do this by repeatedly coring the upper 10 meters or so of snow in the accumulation areas, and by studying the stream at the outlet of the glacier. This is logistically complicated because these two areas are at opposite ends of the glacier – the very top and the very bottom. Separated by seven kilometers, this means a lot of hiking back and forth to try to watch both ...

Jason and I were near our second camp location installing a continuously-recording D-GPS system on the ice when we heard Darek’s voice on the radio “We finished!” The third and final hole of this trip was completed. We quickly finished hooking up the wires and cables for the GPS system and confirmed it was working, then headed up to lower cirque to drop down our thermistor string. Yesterday had been largely a bust in terms of drilling, as well as most other things. The weather continued to remain snowy and windy, and conditions on the glacier were poor for travel as the snow was deep, the trail drifted over, and visibility was frequently zero. I used one break in the weather to pack down the skiway, but that was the extent of my travel away from camp. The drill team tr...

Though the winds largely subsided after the first night, the marginal weather continued for the next week. The entire valley is coated with probably a foot of new snow, falling gradually or fiercely or not at all this past week. It was a bit of unfortunate timing, as we only had about a days’ work on the glacier remaining to finish up our ‘winter’ measurements, but there was little point in trying to do this given the conditions. I used the opportunity to make a bunch of phone calls to help set up other aspects of the project later in summer, as well as settle the minor crises on other projects that inevitably come up in a prolonged absence. Jason sorted through all of the mass balance and surveying data from the past month, doing quality control and figuring out what minor gaps stil...