It is August 20 in Siberia and we are in Yakutsk, Russia en route to Tiksi, Russia. "We" are a group of scientists, program managers and infrastucture development specialists from both the United States and Russia. Tiksi is a small outpost town at the mouth of the Lena River delta, and the location of a Russian Weather Service (Roshydromet) station that will now also become the location of a new meteorological and hydrological observatory. This trip is an exciting step in a program that has been developing over the last 3 years to establish Tiksi as a flagship observatory in the network being coordinated by the International Arctic Systems for Observing the Atmosphere (IASOA). It is summer in Yakutsk and yesterday our local Roshydromet hosts took us on a boat trip on the ...

Yesterday started out in the murk. Grey, with a visibility of about the end of your arm. Not much use getting out of bed I thought, thoroughly depressed. But as the minutes passed there were patches of blue that started to appear and by 10am the weather was worthy of a flight. We hustled down to the small heliport and met with Per who was pleased that we had shifted the coordinates a bit farther south and to a lower elevation. "Much more manageable” was his comment. We did a quick, relatively empty flight up to Tugtillip where we had stashed all the gear. On the way we passed the Bluie One East Airstrip that the US installed in WWII. It still looks very useable. Once at Tugtillip we again left Abbas to fend for himself for an hour as we headed inland. He told me later th...

Today we lost. And it started so well. Up at 7am, misty as anything. No view, no mountain, couldn't even see the airport. Another day of waiting for the weather to cooperate in Kulusuk. After a couple of days, there's not much to do in Kulusuk. But a Welshman and a Scotsman in the dining room of the hotel told us just to wait a bit, that the sun would burn off the mist in only a couple of hours. Before we knew it we started to see small patches of blue sky. Maybe today wasn't going to be a wash-out after all. By 10am the airport was receiving flights from Iceland. The hordes of Chinese tourists were pleased, as were we, as now we had a chance to go and do something! We loaded up the helicopter to head north - the northern sites being our priority just now as the equipment...

Written August 14, 2007. (To see more photos by Mike posted on Google Earth, open this link in Google Earth.) The weather didn't clear up much since last night. The mist rose but then hung around the mountaintops and the wind got up. Windy misty weather, I know it sounds like an oxymoron, but it is weather we see on "the ice" too. We tried to go north in the helicopter and got some of the way towards the fuel cache before turning round. We took 30 minutes to go north towards the fuel cache, but a "slight" tail wind allowed us to cover the same distance back to Kulusuk in 10 minutes. We repacked the helicopter with a different GPS site — it took about 10 minut...

The following was written on August 8: Today was a good day. Thomas and I took off on a DeHavilland Dash 7 at about 10:30 this morning and scored the front seats of the aircraft, right behind the cargo, so we had loads of room. I was surprised about how busy the Kangerlussuaq airport was. We saw several Dash 7s land, they hold about 50 people, and a Boeing of some sort landed too. The Boeing seemed to disgorge people for a good 15 minutes. The plane to Kulusuk took about an hour and a half, and was pretty full. Air Greenland served a complementary meal and several drinks (which is obviously a bad business practice since non of the airlines in the US do that anymore) . The complementary meal was meat and potatoes. Does anyone else spot a pattern here? ...

Written on 13th August 2007: I am writing this on Monday night, with the sun streaming through the fog into my hotel room, and right into my face. There's only one desk to write at so I am wearing my darkest sunglasses. I could close the curtains, but that would spoil the view, which is pure magic. The mountains on the far side of the fjord are higher than the fog, and the icebergs are eerily poking through the murk and everything is changing from minute to minute. Anyway, its Monday, but let's pretend its Saturday. Saturday was a bit special. No, Saturday was a lot special. So cue up some sort of flashback special effect; you can add music, if you like. We were up at around 6:30 am, nowhere near the crack of dawn (which is 4 am and is spect...

Conference Announcement and Call for Papers 2007 Polar Archive Symposium 19-20 November 2007 London, UK Abstract Submission Deadline: Wednesday, 1 August 2007 Publication "Archive" Proposal Deadline: Monday, 10 September 2007 For further information, please go to: http://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/about-the-faculty/events.php or contact: Kathryn Yusoff Open University E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it The symposium "POLAR: Fieldwork and Archive Fever" will be held on 19-20 November 200...

The 2008 convention of the Canadian Science Writers' Association will be held at: Yukon College Whitehorse, Yukon May 24-26, 2008 The convention will focus on the International Polar Year and on science in the North. Besides two days' of panels and presentations, the event will also include a large display of posters about northern science and IPY projects. In addition, a one-day field trip will offer convention participants a chance to meet and talk with scientists and First Nations outside Whitehorse. If you are interested in attending the convention or submitting a poster, or for more information, please contact: Claire Eamer Whitehorse CSWA Convention Organizing Committee claire-eamer@sf...

Contents: 1. The cyber face of IPY 2. Secondment opportunity in IPO 3. Project status information 4. Youth Steering Committee, Early Career Scientists and Youth Activities 5. Looking ahead to AGU 2007 From: IPY International Programme Office To: IPY Project Coordinators cc: IPY Community Google Groups 1. The cyber-face of IPY We continue to make improvements and add material to the IPY web site. Visitors can now go directly to a project search page, and from there search by project name, number, discipline, or country. We start to link national reports to the national committee pages. We feature a new ...

David Legg Brainard (1856-1946) was the last survivor of the United States' Lady Franklin Bay Expedition, 1881-84. Early Years David Legg Brainard, the fifth son of Alanson and Maria Brainard, was born on his parents' farm in Norway, New York, on Dec. 21, 1856. When David was ten years old, the family moved to Freetown, New York. On Sept. 13, 1876, 19-year-old David Brainard left home to travel to Philadelphia and view America's first successful world's fair, the Centennial Exposition. After taking in many marvels of the Machine Age, Brainard boarded a train for home. At New York City, he changed trains and reached into his pocket for money to buy a ticket, but there was none. Too proud to write his family for funds...