IQALUIT, NUNAVUT TERRITORY, CANADA—“Traveling to the Canadian Arctic requires a lot of patience.” Those were the sage words of a fellow weary traveler as we stood at the airport ticket counter at 3:45 p.m. on April 16 in Iqaluit, Canada. Chris and I had missed our connecting flights to points farther north, as had Andrew Brown, a resident of Resolute, Canada who was returning from a month of vacation. We had all been slated for six hours and 1,120 miles of air travel north and west to Igloolik, Pond Inlet, and finally to our North Pole staging base in Resolute (see a map of our travel plans). Our goal is to document what scientists are learning about the Arctic Ocean and how it regulates global climate. But now we were standing in Iqaluit (ik-COW-lu-eet). It was a fitting, and ultim...

The organizing committee for the 8th International ACUNS Student Conference has released the third call for abstracts for the student conference to be held October 19-21, 2007 in Saskatoon, SK. All students conducting northern research are encouraged to submit an abstract for this conference. Travel support will be available for Canadian and international students. Details on how to apply for travel awards will be available soon on the ACUNS website. Please note that the abstract submission deadline has been extended to May 15, 2007. More details: The 8th International ACUNS Student Conference on Northern Studies, titled Melting Boundaries: Carrying Out Effective Research in the Circu...

The Gimli Connection to the Arctic and Antarctic (EoI 1186) project is sponsored by the New Iceland Heritage Museum (NIHM). It looks into the history of our area to discover the connections with the Arctic and Antarctic regions of planet Earth. Called New Iceland before Manitoba was extended north, we are close, geographically, to the Arctic. However, some thought we would have a problem finding a connection to the Antarctic. Not so. We learned that sled dogs from the west shore of Lake Winnipeg went with two Antarctic explorers, Shackleton and Byrd. The research project was on. We hope to educate our patrons, our school kids, and our summer visitors, as we have educated ourselves. We have two display windows at NIHM with artefacts and displays and two looseleaf binders full of informatio...

I-TASC FOR THE INTERNATIONAL POLAR YEAR Friday March 30, 2007 : I-TASC settles for two years at Espace Mendes-France, Poitiers, France I-TASC is a decentralized network of individuals and organisations working collaboratively in the fields of art, engineering, science and technology on interdisciplinary development and tactical deployment of renewable energy, waste recycling systems, sustainable architecture and open-format, open-source media. I-TASC is a lichen-like structure sharing and integrating local knowledge, resources and skills across six continents in order to symbiotically engage with common issues concerning the air, ocean, earth and space. The science centre Espace Mendes-France and Ellipse join the I-TASC project to ...

In the Windows Around the World program, we are using web cameras to collect visual images that are used as data. These images are stored in a database and can be used to see changes in day length through out the year in various places around the world. In the attached handout, I have created a matching excercise that lets students see the changes in Arctic day light and to practice using pie graphs. This worksheet is designed primarily for 4th-6th grades but it could be modified for older and younger students. If you wish to see other filmstrips, you can view them by going to the "Weather Archive" section of the site, located under the "Teachers' Resouces". In a daily filmstrip,...

WHITEHORSE, YUKON. The exciting start of the 2007 Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race is only days away and as the 28 mushers make their final preparations for the epic two-week journey, along with dog food, booties and trail supplies, they will be carrying something very special in their sleds this year. Commemorative Yukon Quest envelopes bearing Canada Post Corporation International Polar Year (IPY) stamps will be carried by each of the 28 sled dog teams between the Whitehorse race start this coming Saturday and the mid-way point in Dawson City, Yukon next week. The historic and well-traveled envelopes will then be presented to an IPY Canadian National Committee member at the Yukon IPY launch celebration on March 1, 2007 at the Westmark Whitehorse H...

On March 1 2007, students at schools around the world marked the advent of International Polar year by conducting an ice experiment. They then told the IPY community and the world by pinning a virtual balloon onto a web-based map showing exactly where they were. It proved to be quite a success, with hundreds of schools contributing so far. IPY enthusiasts also joined in, turning the map into a riot of red balloons. See the whole map here. For technical reasons, browsers don't like it if you show too many balloons at one time, so only the most recent 200 balloons are shown. However, you can see all contributed posts directly by browsing the directory from ...

The International Polar Year has begun. What a week! With US and UK launches on the Monday stirring up media attention, followed by an event in Portugal on the Wednesday and over 20 more national events on the day itself, March 1st 2007, we definitely hit the news! While traveling to Paris with Nicola, to prepare for the international launch, the phone didn't stop ringing, both sides of the Channel Tunnel and even on the Paris subway system! I was contacted by journalists as diverse as New Zealand Radio, an In-flight magazine, BBC World Service, Vatican Radio, Al Jazeera English, an Italian science magazine, Chinese TV networks, and Scientific American to name a few. During the International Ceremony itself, my phone kept shaking, and afterwards, on a tour of Paris, I saw ...

Thank-you to everyone who was involved with launch events, who launched virtual balloons, who launched real balloons (see the Swedish launch web-cast!), those behind the scenes, and those on stage. IPY Celebrations around the world on March 1st, and throughout this week, have been a huge success. You can watch those you missed on the Arctic Portal, or still launch your virtual balloon now, and throughout IPY, to recognise the importance of the polar regions to the whole planet. Here is a map showing balloons that have been launched around the world (you can zoom in on where you live or zoom out to see the world map!): ...

IPY launch events around the world can be viewed live at the Arctic Portal. We also encourage everyone to launch a virtual balloon and show how many people around the world care about the polar regions and are interested in IPY. Everyone is welcome to join in, young or old, polar or tropical! The Official Opening Ceremony takes place in Paris at 11am local time. That is UTC 10:00, or, 1am in Anchorage, 5am in New York, 7am in Santiago, 3.30pm in Calcutta, 7pm in Tokyo, and 9pm in Sydney. You can watch it live or after the event on the web at the Arctic Portal, where you will also find webcasts of other national launch events from around th...