Drilling progress slowed substantially with an improvement in the weather, then stopped completely as we focused on staying alive during a storm. The past few days had been overcast, with no direct sun. With the sun out in full force yesterday, snow began melting on the core barrel and then re-freezing again once it was lowered back in the hole where it was colder. This is problematic because when the core barrel gets stuck in the outer section, the core can be damaged when trying to extract it. So we decided to stop work in the early afternoon and start again at 5AM before the sun came up. At dinner time, the wind had picked up a bit, and continued to grow stronger through the evening. By 3AM, it had intensified quite a bit, and I began to be concerned about the integrity of our tents. At...

After years of planning, failures, and considerable efforts, we have finally extracted the first section of our deep ice core from McCall Glacier. Ice cores from glaciers around the world provide the best record of climate over the past 100 to 100,000 years. No other sources of information provide such long-term, high temporal-resolution or accurate information on climate. McCall Glacier sits inside of essentially a black hole of climate information -- there are neither long-term weather station records nor proxy paleo-climate records in this large region of the Arctic. The ice on McCall Glacier is several hundred years old, and in each of those years clues as to what the weather was like that year get trapped within a layer of snow, which then gets buried by the next year’s layer. Over ...

The big day is here and the weather is good – it’s time to live and work on an arctic glacier for the next few months. I gave our pilot Dirk a call at 7AM to let him know that the weather looked fine in Kaktovik, and he confirmed that the weather in Coldfoot, where his airplane is based, looked good too. So we decided to go for it. It’s a little over a two hour flight for Dirk to fly his DeHavilland Beaver from Coldfoot to Kaktovik, which gave us some time for breakfast and shuttling the rest of our gear down to the airport. The airport in Kaktovik is not like those found in most cities. There is no TSA, there are no parking meters, and there’s not even a building to wait around in. It’s just a runway on a gravel spit between the ocean and the mainland, with an old...

Our five month expedition to arctic Alaska began today with our first stop at Kaktovik, Alaska. Kaktovik is a village of about 300 people, mostly native Alaskans, on the coast of the Arctic Ocean. It’s actually located on an island, separated by a small strip of water from the mainland, but in winter it is all frozen so it is essentially connected. Turner “Is there enough room for me in the car?” No one had much sleep lately. ...

May 26, 2008. Emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) through human activities have a well-known impact on the Earth's climate. Its other, less well-known impact is ocean acidification, with uncertain consequences on marine organisms and ecosystems. The European Project on Ocean Acidification (EPOCA) will be launched on 10 June 2008. Its goal is to document ocean acidification, investigate its impact on biological processes, predict its consequences over the next 100 years, and advise policy-makers on potential thresholds or tipping points that should not be exceeded. The World's oceans cover over 70% of the planet's surface, contribute half of its primary production and contain an enormous diversity of life. Thus it is not surprising that they provide i...

Karin Granqvist leads IPY Project 30, Representations of Sami in Nineteenth Century Polar Literature: The Arctic 'Other' My research scrutinizes how Sámi were represented in text and images in four natural scientists’ combined travel and scientific journals and letter correspondence during the nineteenth-century. They are Göran Wahlenberg (1780-1851), Lars Levi Læstadius (1800-1861), Sven Lovén (1809-1895) and Axel Hamberg (1863-1933). They were all based in Sweden, but did field studies and field research trips in northern Finland, northern Norway and to Spitsbergen, besides Sweden. Their main research fields were within natural science and/or natural his...

The Arctic Institute of North America has released an updated version a classic monograph that describes the expeditions of the First International Polar Year (IPY) of 1882-1883. The book by Institute research associate Bill Barr, The Expeditions of the First International Polar Year 1882-83, was first published in 1985 and focuses on the 14 expeditions that made up the first IPY. The book is available from the Arctic Institute for Cd$28.95 plus shipping and handling. To order a copy, fill out and mail or fax the order form to the Arctic Institute of North America. Order form link: http://www.arctic.ucalgary.ca...

Return to Main Land and Life pages Several IPY projects study water within the Land system. Here are some examples profiling in the Antarctic: • Antarctic Peninsula • Dry Valleys in the Arctic: • Soil Moisture • Arctic Char ____ Hydrology in the Antarctic Peninsula ...

There are many IPY projects studying Polar Flora, Fauna, and Ecology and several of these projects also are members of other collectives focussing on the Arctic and Antarctic. For more information, please see: Conservation for Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF) Evolution and Biodiversity in the Antarctic (EBA) Examples of some of these project areas are described below in the following topics: Arctic Adaptations Evolution and Biodiversity in the Antarctic Soil Ecosystems in the Antarctic Dry Valleys Springtails Nemetodes...

Return to Main Land and Life page Many thanks to Jerry Brown for text, images, and enthusiasm. Further permafrost resources can be found at the end of this page. The following text and selected figures are based mainly on excerpts from a chapter entitled Permafrost and Periglacial Environments by J. Alan Heginbottom (Canada), Jerry Brown (USA), Ole Humlum (Norway) and Harald Svensson (Denmark). It is scheduled for publication later in 2008 in the U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1386-...