Sea Ice Knowledge Studies in Shishmaref, Alaska Part of IPY project 166: Sea Ice Knowledge and Use (SIKU) by Josh Wisniewski, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, PhD Candidate Department of Anthropology What do Iñupiaq hunters in the Northwest Alaska community of Shishmaref know about sea ice? How do they express knowledge in the context of hunting? And how can we come to know as directly as possible something of what people know about the environment and how they know it in relation to converging and diverging ontological and epistemological structures that shape local knowledge claims? To explore these questions I am c...

Submitted by Karl Torstein Hetland Project manager K12, IPY Norway "Thank you for some fantastic days at Svalbard" "The teacher workshop at Svalbard was very inspiring" "This was a fantastic workshop - I feel filled with energy and experience - wonderful colleagues (Danish participant)" This was some of the feedback we got from the teacher workshop at Svalbard, which 22 Norwegian and 5 Danish teachers attended for a week in August. There were not many hours to be alone during the week, but it was always daylight so it was not too busy. The workshop started in Oslo with polar history at the Fram museum and the ...

WIN A WEEK ABOARD AN ARCTIC ICEBREAKER!! (INCLUDING TRANSPORTATION FROM YOUR HOME COUNTRY) In April 2008, join journalists from all over the world for a week aboard the Canadian research icebreaker Amundsen. The World Federation of Science Journalists—in collaboration with the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the International Polar Year Circumpolar Flaw Lead Project—announces a competition offering science journalists the chance to win one of three week-long trips aboard the Canadian research icebreaker Amundsen. You will fly all the way to Inuvik (Canada), and hop aboard a Twin Otter aircraft to the famous icebreaker, where you will get first hand experience of global warming where it is unfolding the fastest. ENTRY GUIDELINES...

The International Polar Foundation's SciencePoles website has an interview Meredith Hooper to mark the publication of her new book: 'The Ferocious Summer: Palmer's Penguins and the Warming of Antarctica'. A trustee of the IPF-UK and recipient of the US National Science Foundation Antarctica Service Medal, Meredith Hooper's writing ranges from award-wining non-fiction books for all ages to academic articles and highly acclaimed fiction and information titles for children. During the last fourteen years, she has been invited as a wri...

Summary: The complete story of all IPY focuspoints, expressed in one videoart clip. No words, only moving pictures. Showing a silent but dramatic process in nature and culture. produced by Ap Verheggen, 2007 --------------------------------------------------------- The video is recorded in Nunavut, Canada, as well as at Cap Nez, France. --------------------------------------------------------- My name i...

PolarTREC 2008/2009 Teacher Application Deadline: Friday, 5 October 2007 For further information, please contact: E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Phone: 907-474-1600 or visit the PolarTREC website Please note, international applicants are allowed to apply however preference is usually given to US teachers. International applicants will be dealt with on a case by case basis by NSF if they make it into the final pool of applicants. -------------------- APPLICATIONS FOR POLARTREC 2008/2009 TEACHERS ARE NOW AVAILABLE PolarTREC is currently accepting applications from teachers for the second year of teacher research...

*1st OSL-APECS-PYRN training workshop on permafrost research methods -- St. Petersburg, 30 Nov-2 Dec 2007 -- Full travel grants available to PYRN and APECS members* The Otto Schmidt Laboratory for Polar and Marine Research (OSL) at the State Research Center for Arctic and Antarctic Research (AARI) together with the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS) and the Permafrost Young Researchers Network (PYRN) are organising a training workshop on modern investigation techniques in the field of permafrost science (http://www.awi-potsdam.de/pyrn/oslworkshop.html). The workshop will be held from November 30 to December 2, 2007 in St. Petersburg,...

Submitted September 7: A dirty little secret. Its 95 degrees Fahrenheit outside just now. I guess I am not in Tasilliq anymore! The last weekend we waited for the weather to clear but the view was the same as always - rain and fog. Sunday wasn't even nice, a change for the books. Monday was worse! It was snowy and rainy. I had booked a ticket to leave Tasilliq on wednesday so we hoped that Tuesday would be better. When I woke up on Tuesday morning the view was blue skies, no clouds and majestic snow capped mountains all around. The autumn was officially here, and frosty nights would be coming very soon. Tuesday was my last chance to go and finish off the two sites to the south that had not had enough batteries installed. ...

From the perspective of the North or South Pole, every year is essentially one long day that lasts half a year and one long night lasting the other half. This has enormous impact on how much solar energy is received in different times of year, which in turn influences physical processes, such as the freezing and thawing of snow and ice, biological processes, such as migration, and the lives of people who live in polar regions. If the Earth were perpendicular on its axis, everywhere on the planet would receive an equal amount of sunshine (and darkness) every day. But because of the tilt of the Earth on its axis (currently 23.5 degrees off the perpendicular), only two days a year — the Equinoxes every spring and fall — have equal amounts of sunshine everywhere. ...

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 ...