Activity time: 20-30 minutes + freezing time PDF version, with pictures, to download: Sea ice and circulation activity.pdf BACKGROUND: The freezing temperature of water depends on the amount of dissolved salts (salinity). Normal ocean water, with a salinity of about 3.4%, begins to freeze when temperatures reach about -1.9°C. At its maximum extent in the winter, sea ice covers about 19 million square kilometres of the Southern Ocean near Antarctica. Approximately 80% of this ice melts each summer, contributing to the global mixing of ocean water. Vertical mixing of ocean water, known as ‘overturning circulation’ or ‘thermohaline...

Mark your diaries: SEPTEMBER 21ST WILL BE THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL POLAR DAY, HIGHLIGHTING SEA ICE. IPY and Sea Ice Over 30 large, international IPY projects are studying some aspect of Sea Ice. This includes ship expeditions, remote sensing, sea ice ecosystems, the importance of sea ice to polar bears and marine mammals, climate research, exhibitions, and books. On September 13th, a web-page dedicated to Sea Ice will be published on www.ipy.org listing projects that are involved, real-time expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic, contacts for media, sources for images, and background information. There will also be educational and community activities including classroom...

MEDIA RELEASE For more information, visit the SIPEX expedition website. An earlier than usual foray into far southern waters will help scientists understand the connection between Antarctic sea ice and the ecosystems that depend on it for survival. The voyage is Australia's first in around 10 years to head into the Southern Ocean while the sea ice remains in place before the summer thaw. The Sea Ice Physics and Ecology eXperiment (SIPEX*) voyage, jointly organised by the Antarctic Climate & Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre (Antarctic CRC) and the Australian Antarctic Division, will sail from Hobart at the beginning of September 2007. Eighty-six scientists from eight nations will use a suite of...

We’re still not done. As always the weather has been unfriendly – rain and snow the other day, but now the mountains are quite lovely with their slight dusting of snow. Summer has finished and winter is fast approaching. There’s a nice high pressure over the ice sheet and some nice lows offshore, so although the views are incredible, so are the winds, which are ferocious at the places we want to go. With the 222 helicopter disappearing to Nuuk to get new engines we now have to slot our work timetable into the 212's scheduled visits to the Kulusuk airport to pick up passengers and its scheduled, lifeline visits to outlying communities. If we had the work we think we could be put out in the morning and get picked up in the evening but we cannot really work in that mode ...

Contents: 1) Joint Committee Assessment, for October 2007 2) AGU Sessions and Activities, for December 2007 3) IPY Science Day - 21 September 2007 4) IPY Youth International Planning Workshop, for September 2007 From: IPY International Programme Office To: IPY Project Coordinators cc: IPY Community Google Groups 1) Joint Committee Assessment The IPY Joint Committee will hold their sixth meeting in Canada in late October 2007. With most national funding decisions known, and with most IPY Projects underway or in late stages of planning, the Joint Committee will make an initial assessment of the overall programme. The IPY Expression of Interest (EoI) data...

The site we installed at Koge Bugt was incomplete. The kind of helicopter we used meant that we just couldn’t take all the batteries with us. It's still running on a single battery just now, which won’t do much good with winter fast approaching. We’re going to need a second trip out there to put more batteries in. We started planning to do that over the next couple of days. Because, you know? What could go wrong? In the meantime more people we know had arrived in Angmassalik, and were staying at the Hotel Nansen. The hotel is owned by the same people as the one we’re in (I think) but allows you to cook for yourself. So Abbas was basically press ganged into cooking a curry, with pakora no less, for everyone. Thomas made a Swedish apple pie and I threw together a sala...

Submitted September 2: So its been a long time since I wrote anything, or at least it feels like a long time. To be blunt, not a huge hell of a lot has happened since then. The main feature has been rain, a little more rain and then some more rain, followed by rain and a little bit of wind. We have managed to get another site installed and partially installed a couple of other sites, but weather has not been friendly. I think we last left off on the 23rd of August, something to do with a boat trip to Isertoq if I can remember that far back correctly. That was over a week ago, so what has happened since then? Hmm. We fixed the antenna at the Helheim site, same kind of deal as the last visit to Helheim, crammed into a 212 helicopter this time. The first and only time we've be...

In response to journalists and educators wanting an 'angle' on the extremely broad International Polar Year, quarterly "IPY Days" are being developed that focus on a particular aspect of polar research, and highlight current research occurring as part of IPY. The first of these will be held on September 21st and will focus on Sea Ice. Below is a list of IPY projects that study, or are concerned with, some aspect of Sea Ice. Their webpages contain a huge amount of information. For direct contact with researchers, please consult this list of sea ice experts. The following list includes IPY ID and chart name, and short title 8 ...

Conference Announcement and Call for Papers: Arctic Frontiers 20-25 January 2008, Tromso, Norway Abstract Submission Deadline: Sunday, 30 September 2007 For further information, please go to: http://www.arctic-frontiers.com or contact:

Invitation to a press conference: On September 3, 2007, The Federal Minister of Education and Research, Dr Annette Schavan, will inspect the new Antarctic station Neumayer III, as well as the new research aircraft Polar 5, in Bremerhaven. Dear Sir or Madam, dear colleagues, The new German Antarctic station Neumayer III is currently under construction in Bremerhaven. It is scheduled to replace the present station in 2009. Neumayer III has been designed and will be constructed by the two Bremerhaven companies JH Kramer and Kaefer Isoliertechnik (Kaefer Technology) by order of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research. In order to assure subsequent trouble-free assembly on the ice, a large section of the building will be test-const...