The five members of the Svalbard Scientific Skiing Expedition, colloquially known as the “Frozen Five”, met in Grenoble last week for the final preparations before embarking on their 11 week voyage through the Arctic wilderness on the 29th March. We’re a group of graduate students of various geosciences that met at UNIS in Longyearbyen during our diverse university careers. From March-June 2007, we will be skiing across the length of Spitsbergen, Svalbard’s largest island. The route, measuring about 1000 km, will take us over numerous glaciers, patches of sea ice and through the territory of the polar bear. Through this expedition, we wish to share our passion for the Arctic regions with the general public and, in particular, high school students. Blo...

If you want to get involved in International Polar Year right from the start now is your chance!! The IPY Youth Steering Committee is asking young people from around the world to write to their political leaders (and send a copy to us) about their concerns for the Polar Regions and what they personally are doing to make a difference (biking to school, recycling, starting a polar club in their school, doing a polar science project). The YSC will present these letters at the official launch of IPY in Paris on March 1st and on our website. Throughout the Polar Year we will follow up with youth to see how they are doing with their commitments. To find out more download the launch package. Text: Melian...

Hello! And a happy polar greeting to you all from the gang here at Students on Ice! Thank you to IPY HQ for providing this opportunity for international youth to share their thoughts about the earth's polar regions and about the upcoming International Polar Year! This is a great site, with many amazing blogs! Here at SOI, we have just wrapped up another exciting Antarctic expedition - you can view highlights from the trip on our SOI website. We have invited our SOI alumni to visit this site, to explore the other blogs, and post their impressions, hopes and memories of Antarctica here. Many of our alumni are busy with environmental issues - some polar, some otherwise - and we are encouragin...

When the Discovery glided into the water at Dundee Dockyard on March 21, 1901, the air was crowded with the accompanying roar of cheers. The first ship built in Britain especially for exploration work was about to sail, and steam, into history. She was the principal vessel in the 1901-04 National Antarctic Expedition, at the end of which the ice sought to entomb her. The following years saw Discovery serving as a merchantman for the Hudson's Bay Company, and during the First World War as a supply ship. In 1916, she was sent south to rescue Sir Ernest Shackleton's men stranded on Elephant Island, but while at Montevideo, Uruguay, it was discovered that the Chilean naval vessel Yelcho had saved the marooned explorers. Ominous events eventually beckoned ...

January 2007 The Smithsonian Institution announces a polar science symposium in early May 2007, as one of the inaugural U.S. contributions to celebrate the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-2008. Smithsonian at the Poles: Contributions to International Polar Year Science is being convened by Smithsonian Under Secretary for Science David L. Evans. The symposium will present research findings by Smithsonian scholars and their collaborators from Artic and Antarctic research, with particular attention to changes in polar systems past, present and future, and their global impact. The symposium will carry on a tradition of polar science that began nearly 150 years ago and resulted in some of the worlds foremost collections and archives of Arctic an...

Good news for IPY and for our Danish colleagues! The Finance Committee of the Danish Parliament has approved additional funding for IPY. The following is an unofficial translation of the official notes associated with the approval of the IPY funding: 'In 2007-2009 the International Polar Year (IPY) will take place and on this background 30,000,000 DKK will be allocated in 2007 and in 2008 in order to accentuate the IPY opportunity. The funds will supplement the current grants for Arctic research and logistics support and will be issued by the Commission for Scientific Reseach in Greenland and the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation, respectively.' For more information, visit the ...

You can track the Polarstern research vessel in a number of ways as it traverses Antarctic waters. You can view the raw coordinate data here on www.sailwx.info's tracking map. You can also track it in Google Earth by downloading this constantly updated file from the SCAR MarBIN portal. The file in turn accesses position data from this page on the Polar View website, which al...

Boulder, Colorado is home to some of the world's leading polar and climate experts, and so to help celebrate the beginning of the International Polar Year we'll be holding Ice Fest, which may, if successful, become an annual event. This year it will be held March 8-11th on the University of Colorado at Boulder campus, with "Arts & Sciences Day "on Thursday March 8th showcasing phenomenal photograph from both polar regions, a special keynote talk on Friday followed by "An Evening with Michael Brown," an award-winning Boulder filmmaker, "Family Day" on Saturday t...

In partnership with the Japanese National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR), Elsevier will launch "Polar Science", a new international peer-reviewed journal, in 2007. This new quarterly journal is a consolidation of five existing publications: "Polar Bioscience", "Polar Meteorology and Glaciology", "Antarctic Meteorite Research", "Polar Geoscience", and "Advances in Polar Upper Atmosphere Research". Under the Editorship of professor Kazuo Shibuya (NIPR & Department of Polar Science, SOKENDAI, Tokyo), the journal will publish original articles and reviews focused on a wide spectrum of sciences related to the polar regions of the Earth and other planets. For more information about the journal, please go to the ...

European Union International Polar Year - Arctic Research Opportunities at the European Centre for Arctic Environmental Research (Ny-