In an effort to spread IPY's word and make children aware of the importance of the poles for the Earth Systems, teachers in the South of Brazil have been doing a great job in the classrooms.

Brazil is a tropical country, very far away from the poles. Very little is taught to Brazilian students about the polar regions.

But thanks to a group of very dedicated teachers who want to change that reality, students in Erval Grande and Pinhalzinho, both in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, have joined students from all over the world during the polar weeks, and have been doing wonderful school projects on polar topics.

Under the coordination of Mrs. Otilia M. Schneider Costa (Arts teacher), and with the help of MSc Erli S. Costa, founder of APECS Brazil, the children have been learning a lot about polar life and about the important role  everyone plays  in the preservation of the polar ice and of life on Earth.

Teachers Otilia M. S. Costa, Enaura Maria da Cunha Pereguda (Integrated Studies), Adoraci T. M. Poleto (Geography), Odete Santin Carminatti (Portuguese/Language Arts), Adriana Natalina Faé (Geography), Josiane Vial (Geography), have been giving great examples of how to work with interdisciplinarity in Education, and how to make students conscious of their role in society.

Here are some pictures of the wonderful things they have been doing in the South of Brazil. We hope they serve as inspiration for many other educators and students around the globe!

There are many skills that early career polar researchers require for the basis of a strong career. To help address this, the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS), together with the ArcticNet Student Association, and the Northern Research Forum held the IPY International Early Career Researcher Symposium, held in Victoria, B.C, Canada from December 4-8, which was sponsored mainly by the IPY Canadian Federal Programme and the Canadian Polar Research Commission. This career development workshop bought together 71 participants and 20 mentors from 14 different countries.

The Symposium brought together early career polar researchers from a range of disciplines for a series of training sessions to develop professional skills, work with senior mentors, and develop international and interdisciplinary collaborations. This Symposium had seven themed sessions, all of which included a plenary talk attended by all symposium participants, and a hands-on training session. All plenary talks and breakout sessions were recorded, and recordings will be available on the APECS website by June (www.apecs.is/workshops/victoria09). In addition, the Symposium organizers hired a conference facilitator, who lead icebreaker activities, and discussed different personality traits and how they affect different peoples perception.

The evaluations from both participants and mentors have been extremely positive, with the vast majority ranking the quality of the breakout sessions as "Good" or "Excellent". Participants of the workshop said that less than 20% of what they learned from the three days together had been taught in their graduate programs and all stated the need for more events like this on an international and interdisciplinary level.

To read a full summary outling the Symposium click here.

Content:

Change in IPO

4) IPY International Field School in Svalbard, 21 June to 9 July 2010

Following the exciting success of the 2009 IPY Field School, the University Centre in Svalbard, in partnership with APECS and with support from the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the University of the Arctic, and IPY Norway, announces another International Field School opportunity for 2010. This 3-week course will focus on environmental change in the Arctic and Antarctic through lectures and field excursions in Svalbard, Norway. The course will cover topics on Glaciology, Geology, Meteorology, Oceanography, Marine/Terrestrial Biology, Permafrost, and the Human Dimension in Polar Regions. There are some travel grants available for those that need financial assistance.

For more information about the 2010 Field School, see: http://unis.no. The deadline for applications occurs on 8 April 2010.

You can hear a presentation of the 2009 IPY Field School in session T6-3 at the Oslo IPY conference. We expect 6 or more students from the 2009 School to attend the Oslo conference.

5) Call for proposals for International Teams in Space Science

The International Space Science Institute supports groups of scientists involved in Space Research to work together in an efficient and flexible format of several subsequent meetings, during which data are analysed and compared with theories and models. This call is open to scientists of any nationality active in research in Space Sciences or Earth Sciences using space data. IPY researchers should take advantage of this opportunity to find support for further international research and collaboration. For more information, contact Dr. Maurizio Falanga, Science Program Manager, at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or on +41 31 631 4893.

6) APECS Update

We are delighted to announce that APECS launched a mentorship programme in February. Since its inception, APECS has aimed to provide a continuum of knowledge in polar research and foster interactions between APECS members and experienced polar researchers and professionals. We would like to thank all of you who have already participated in an APECS event by giving guidance to early-career researchers. As an extension of the mentor panels that APECS already runs at major conferences, the mentorship program now involves the creation of an online database of mentors who are willing to share their knowledge with talented early-career researchers. For more information, and to sign up as a mentor, please visit www.apecs.is/mentors.

APECS had its first very successful Virtual Poster Session call this month with two posters being presented and discussed. Two successful mentor panels were held at the International Glaciological Conference “Ice and Climate Change: a View from the South” in Valdivia, Chile and at the 2010 Ocean Sciences Meeting in Portland, USA. More events are being planned for the International Polar Week in March.

APECS, and young polar researchers everywhere, are excited about the IPY Open Science Conference in Oslo. 400 stipends have been awarded and accepted. We have also sent out notifications to the participants of the APECS Career Development workshop which will be held prior to the conference. We are particularly grateful to the Research Council of Norway for the stipend support and funding the other APECS activities and to several groups for funding the travel of these young researchers: the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC), the European Polar Board / European Science Foundation, the Canadian IPY Federal Programme Office, the International Arctic Research Center in Alaska together with the US NSF, and several IPY National Committees who have agreed to fund their young researchers travel from India, Japan, Austria, Portugal and hopefully a few more (thanks to Nicola at the IPY IPO for making this happen!). More information on the progress of organising early-career researcher activities in conjunction with the IPY-OSC can be found at www.apecs.is/oslo2010.

A very large iceberg, measuring 78 kilometres long and 39 kilometres wide has broken off from the Mertz Glacier Tongue in the Australian Antarctic Territory after another iceberg measuring 97 kilometres long (B9B) collided with it on the 12th or 13th of February. The event was discovered by Australian and French researchers during a joint study that began in 2007 during the International Polar Year.

For further information on this event, please visit the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre (ACE CRC) website at http://www.acecrc.org.au/drawpage.cgi?pid=news&sid=news_media&aid=797707 or the Austrlian Antarctic Division's website at http://www.aad.gov.au/default.asp?casid=37551. You may also view images and a more in-depth description of the event in the media release here.

Photo: Neil Young

Photo: Neil Young

Photo: Barbara Wienecke, Mertz Glacier Tongue

Content:

1) Oslo Science Conference
2) Teacher's workshop in Oslo
3) Polar Week - 15 to 19 March 2010
4) APECS Update

Bye Bye

Two months can be a long time. On this cruise the days seemed to pass in minutes and so much happened. Until last night we sampled 1000 m sediment. We made a way of about 9950 NM. The last miles to Wellington we are compared by a lot of birds, especially the albatross likes to swim near the ship during the station work.

Teamwork on board

The work on board - you see it on the picture - is successfully finished and the teamwork was great. In the next ten years, you will read a lot of the research results in the scientific publications around the world. I hope the samples will answer a lot of the questions the scientists on board have asked in the past.

We like to thank everyone who helped to realize the website. We thank the readers and hope you found some interesting information about this cruise.

So, bye bye and have a good time!

Ulrich Breitsprecher & Abhinav Gogoi

Sunday, 24 January 2010

The calm stormy seas have been very common during this expedition. So much so that we have had to abandon our cruise track once and most other times to alter station plans working around the weather. The constant battering of the waves against the ship has also demanded a sleeping manner of heaving, tossing and turning in bed much to the chagrin of a much-required rest after a long day or night’s work. Popular inkling labors on a ‘such-is-life-at-sea’ phrase and/or ‘such-is-the-Southern-Ocean’!

However, the stormy Southern Pacific Ocean also showed a new fascia of remarkable calm never seen before during this cruise. Any discernible waves or patterns of such had ceased to exist for miles and the ocean lingered simply as a mirror of an overcast greyish day! Mountain lakes shaded by crags and hills, where time just stands still, flood into memory! Either it was a natural ‘calm before the storm’ as the cliché demands or an often conspicuous platitude of ‘calm after the storm’, owing to the then recently escaped storm, because of which we had to alter our cruise track.

Yet, such calm ambiance also provided an opportunity to reflect on the immediacy of our track to New Zealand and the rising air temperatures (of about 10° C) evident of reaching sub-tropical regions after being on sea for exactly 53 days. It is the Tuesday January 19^th 2010 as I write and we arrive in New Zealand on the 25^th January midnight touching the dawn of the 26^th January 2010.

Abhinav Gogoi

First view of an island (the Antipodes Islands)

INTERNATIONAL POLAR YEAR OSLO SCIENCE CONFERENCE
8-12 June 2010 | Oslo, Norway

LATE SUBMISSIONS DEADLINE - 25 JANUARY 2010

Submit abstracts now at: www.ipy-osc.no

The event has already attracted in excess of 2250 abstracts and promises to be
the major international event for the polar community in 2010.

To enable inclusion of as much IPY and related polar data in the final
programme, late submissions will continue to be accepted until Monday 25
January. We would be grateful if you could pass this information to
interested colleagues, students and polar networks.

Thursday, the 15th of January

Going north and one day lost

Last view of icebergs (Photo Credit: Ulrich Breitsprecher)

Now we are going north and the sea gets bumpy again. The swell is up to 4 - 5m. We crossed 60° South and the “Roaring Fifties” are back again. Wherever it's possible, we take samples. The weather forecast on board helps to find calm moments for using all devices like the Multinet, Pistoncore, Multicore and CTD.

On Wednesday, we passed the International Date Line and lost one day, so the Weight Watchers Club approaches earlier than I expected. Although the dessert on board is my favourite dish, I didn't plump out. But I think it's only luck at the measurement.

On board now everyone is busy in writing his part of the cruise report. In the evening, we had a lot of talks by the scientists. Sometimes I feel sorry that I was not interested in chemistry in school for there are a lot of interesting methods to analyze the samples. I understand the overview, but the details are sometimes a secret for me. In my next life, I will do it better.

I asked some of my fellow travellers: “What is the fascination of the cruise?”

Daniel answered: “We are on board for two months without reaching a harbour. This is rare in these days.”

Marie answered: “On this journey I notice that I can renounce easily things of the everyday life, no mobile, no Facebook, no shopping. I need only very few things.”

Ling answered: “Although there are people from different countries on board, all are working together without any problem.”

Cornelia answered: “I see how people are acting on board in the way they are. Nobody behaves in a different way for two months. This is fascinating.”

For the guestbook on Polarstern we photographed all the scientists on the helideck.

Here we are:

Science Group (Photo Credit: Ulrich Breitsprecher)

 

Ulrich Breitsprecher