Dear friends, The next International Polar Day, focussing on our Changing Earth, is in two weeks. We have prepared a number of webpages, resources, and links to relevant IPY science. These can all be accessed from the link on IPY.org (top right), or directly at http://www.ipy.org/index.php?/ipy/detail/earth/ There are also three aspects of particular interest that I hope you can inform your networks about: 1. EDUCATIONAL FLYERS Flyers can be downloaded from the educators page at ...

Submitted February 24: After losing 24 hours research time to rough weather, the last four days have been spent completing core station transects from the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf, and down the continental slope. These are the stations where all our sampling equipment is deployed. Photo: The midday to midnight watch gathered proudly around their erratic. By J. Mitchell The DTIS (Deep Towed Imaging System) video and still images have shown us that much of this area of seabed west of Iselin Bank, adjacent to Cape Adare, is very rocky compared to the southern shelf areas sampled earlier...

Background From 1999-2003, I attended Mary Washington College, now known as the University of Mary Washington, in Fredericksburg, Virginia. I'm originally from New York. After graduating high school in 1999, I was anxious to get out of the state and try something new. I was spoiled rotten at MWC because they opened up a brand new science center my first fall semester and had state-of-the-art facilities and equipment. I had four passions in college: music, art, theatre and chemistry. I did my best to satisfy them all through classes and extra-curricular work but ultimately decided to ...

During the Antarctic summer season 2007-2008, the International Polar Foundation and its partners have pulled through an amazing achievement: the Princess Elisabeth station building can now be seen atop the Utsteinen Nunatak. After a pre-mounting phase in Brussels last September, the objective of this year's expedition was to transport the station's modules to the construction site and to build the foundations, anchoring points, garages and outer shell of the first "zero emission" Antarctic station. The team has been working nearly every day since November 2007 to complete these tasks, with a c...

Now that we have completed sampling the southern stations, the focus of the survey has moved north to the central area adjacent to Iselin Bank, which lies east of Cape Adare. The original survey plan had an extensive sampling program in this area but this year’s ice conditions has resulted in the need to reassess and redistribute the sampling effort. This redesign is completed using all available satellite ice imagery we can access and interpretations we receive from a commercial company (Enfotec), who specialise in vessel navigation in the Arctic and Antarctic. Some of this data is readily available on the web and some has to be ordered in advance and are charged for. The higher the resolution required, then the higher the cost. Figures are examples of in...

By Andrea Juan, Curator, "Polar South, Art in Antarctica" at the Museum of National University of Tres de Febrero in Buenos Aires, Argentina The light is so intense and bright that it modifies the colors throughout the day, while the horizon line blends into a white plane where the sun bounces and never sets. A deep and vivid feeling seizes us when, at the end of a long voyage, we step on Antarctic soil, a soil covered with fossils. As sea, rock, and time, Antarctica is today the largest natural freshwater reserve for humankind. Being there is to witness a different world on thi...

Bremerhaven, February 4, 2008: In the Southern Ocean, large quantities of surface-drifting plankton algae are able to significantly reduce the carbon dioxide content of the surface waters, which can affect the global carbon dioxide cycle. This is one of the results from an Antarctic expedition which has just drawn to a close in Cape Town on February 4, and which was led by the Alfred Wegener Institute, part of the Helmholtz Association. On February 5, an international team of scientists will discuss the results obtained to date and pressing questions of Antarctic research as part of a workshop aboard the icebreaker Polarstern. Federal research minister Dr Annette Schavan will use the opportunity to meet representatives of leading research institutions and South African mini...

Thousands of tourists visit the continent every year, most of them on board large, comfortable cruiseships. Dutch travel photographer Thijs Heslenfeld wanted true adventure. He boarded the Dutch threemast barque Europa for a journey of discovery to some of the loneliest, coldest and most beautiful places on earth. Heslenfeld sailed to Antarctica twice on board the Europa. Last year he did the full two month trip from Argentina all the way to South Africa. His Antarctica images have been published in magazines wordwide, including National Geographic Adventure and GEO Saison. Now his best pho...

By Lucia Simion Far away from traffic jams, polluted cities and rat races, one thousand people are getting ready to live a fantastic adventure on the most remote continent of the world: They are the over-wintering population of Antarctica. Inhabiting some 35 different permanent stations scattered across a continent twice as large as Europe, they will be alone on the ice, where they will experience the polar night, the austral auroras, the blizzards, the solitude and the confinement. They will be more isolated than the astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) as it is very hard to be evacuated from Antarctica during the polar night. One of these stations is Concordia, where the overwintering began on February 1, 2008 for a crew of thirteen people fr...

Submitted February 17, 2008: Over the past few days we have been working our way south into the lower Ross Sea and then eastwards towards 180°, paralleling the Ross Ice Shelf. During this period Tangaroa got to its southernmost point ever at 76° 52.164’S 179° 55.856’ W. As expected, the main controller of all our activities has been the weather. Heavy snow showers earlier in this period gave everything a white coating, but once the snow cleared and the clouds broke, we had good (but distant) views of Ross Island, with the mountains of the Asgaard and Olympic Ranges as a backdrop. ...