By Cristina Millan Well, it’s been just under 10 months since my last posting but the thing is: I am back in Antarctica. Last year I spent three months here working on the ANDRILL Project (check here for last year’s amazing season). ANDRILL (ANtarctic DRILLing) is a multinational project involving four countries (US, New Zealand, Italy, and Germany) with the goal of recovering sediments from the sea floor. One of the aims of this project is to gain a better understanding of global climatic change, in which Antarctica plays a very important role. The structural geology group (to which I belong, together with three other colleagues) is also interested in the broader geologic history of the area where we are drilling: how and w...

SIPEX Update: 28 September – 10 October We have bid a fond farewell to the sea ice as we have reached the edge of the ice zone and are now in the open ocean heading for Hobart and home, so it is time for a short review of the last couple of weeks. When I last wrote, we were pretty much stationary in an area of heavily deformed ice, waiting for the ice pack to break up a bit and make travelling easier. Some of the biologists on board had noticed that the ice we were breaking through in that area was very brown on the underside. The brown colouring comes from the algae that live in and on the underside of the ice and are an important part of the sea ice ecosystem. There had been little algae in the sea ice we had sampled so far on this voyage and the biologist...

Ice Sheet Press Release More About Ice Sheets Please use the listed press contacts, lead scientist, or profiled expert in the following pages to learn more about IPY Projects Studying Ice Sheets ...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ANTARCTICA: LIFE ON THE ICE explores life at the bottom of the world What is it like to live in the most desolate place on the planet? The newest collection from outdoorswoman and writer Susan Fox Rogers brings together twenty scientists, writers and workers who tell their dramatic, funny, often moving tales of daily life amidst the ice and isolation of Antarctica. Realizing her childhood dream of walking in the footsteps of Antarctic explorers, editor Rogers spent six weeks on the Ice learning the ways of the penguin researchers, ice diggers, atmospheric scientists, cooks, pilots, and others who are drawn, almost mystically, to the most foreboding climate one can imagine. “I traveled to the Antarctic bec...

The exhibition has been open for over four months now and has seen the graduation of countless ice cadets. If you are yet to visit the exhibition, here is a virtual tour showing some of the exciting things you are missing out on. It all begins with a briefing from Sanjit, our Ice Station Commander, who will guide us through our Antarctic adventure. We soon learn of the perils that lie ahead as we enter the freezer room. This is set at a chilling -10ºC and you wou...

The first International Polar Science Day was held on September 21st and focussed on Sea Ice. The second will occur on Thursday, December 13th, and will focus on Ice Sheets, Traverses, and Exploration. Below is a list of IPY projects that study, or are concerned with, some aspect of Ice Sheets. Their webpages contain a huge amount of information, and the full proposals contain contact information at the end. The following list includes IPY ID and chart name, and short title: 13 Sea Level & Tides in Polar Regions 20 ...

Who says you can't be green in Antarctica? At the Australian Mawson station in East Antarctica, two wind turbines have been generating part of the station’s electricity since 2003. At wind speeds above 12 m/s — a common occurrences during eleven months of the year — the wind turbines are capable of generating 100% of the electricity needed by the station for long periods of time. The wind turbines have led to monthly savings in diesel fuel use of up to 58%. Over 10,000 litres of fuel are saved per month, significantly reducing the emissions of carbon dioxide that contribute to global warming. For more information on renewable power sources tried and tested for the polar regions, check out the ...

By Sandy Zicus, Antarctic Climate & Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre We’re now a bit more than three weeks into our six-week Sea Ice Physics and Ecosystems eXperiment (SIPEX) adventure. On 18 September, we entered a section of land-fast ice surrounded by huge grounded icebergs, some of which have walls up to 50 metres high. It was impossible to capture the true scale with a camera (although most of us kept trying), especially when there was nothing of a known size in view to serve as a reference. Land-fast ice, often called just ‘fast ice’, is sea ice that is attached to land or to grounded icebergs. Fast ice is a bit different in character from regular sea ice. It is more or less permanent in one area and is generally not moved arou...

Fundació Caixa Catalunya in collaboration with the American Museum of Natural History is organizing a travelling exhibition entitled “Trapped in the Ice: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition” containing the original pictures taken by James Francis Hurley during the expedition. This exhibition also presents information about research and the current situation in Antarctica together with details of the International Polar Year, and is accompanied by a series of lectures and educational activities addressed to primary and secondary students. This exhibition is touring Spain for two years, coincidi...

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 ...