Imagine a giant meat locker. Now imagine three of them in a row. That's where several kilometers of ice from the deep drilling projects at Vostok and Dome C of the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica are stored outside of Grenoble, France. For my thesis work, I'm using these ice core records to reconstruct past climate conditions going back to 800,000 years ago. Unfortunately, by the time I started my thesis, these deep drilling projects were completed or nearly, so I didn't get a chance to make it out onto the ice. That's where the meat lockers come in. Several times a year I get to suit up and make my way past pallets of meat and cheese (this is France...

ATTENTION: News, Education Editors CONTACT: Tom Simons, University Communications, (402) 472-8514 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) Lincoln, Neb., Dec. 19, 2006 -- The Antarctic Geological Drilling (ANDRILL) Program drilled to a new record depth of 1,000 meters below the seafloor from the site on the Ross Ice Shelf near Scott Base in Antarctica Dec. 16. The depth made ANDRILL the most successful Antarctic drilling program in terms of depth and rock core recovered, breaking the previous record of 999.1 meters set in 2000 by the Ocean Drilling Program's drill ship, the Joides Resolution. The operations team of 25 drillers, engineers and support staff are justifiably thrilled, ANDRILL Project Manager Jim Cowie said. Antarctica New Ze...

ANDRILLs ARISE Program is seeking educators with a broad background in science activities and professional involvement indicating excellence in science education. All applicants must have at least 3 years science teaching experience in a K-16 school or institution, not including the current school year. ARISE (Antarctic Research Immersion for Science Educators) is a component of the ANtarctic geological DRILLing (ANDRILL) Program, which seeks to understand the geologic history of Antarctica through the study of core samples and data recovered from drilling below the seafloor at sites beneath the ice shelf and sea ice. The ARISE goal is to raise public awareness of Antarctic scientific drilling and integrate polar geosciences content into a wide range of learning environme...

Nobody appreciates the impact of Arctic change more than the people who live there. A unique feature of this IPY is a focus on understanding how people observe and respond to change. People are not passive observers but integral parts of the Arctic system. The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC recently ended an exhibition that put a human face on the warming of the Arctic. A new web site incorporates images and information from that exhibition -- Arctic: A Friend Acting Strangely. The National Snow and Ice Data Center also distributes a multimedia product, ...

The Arctic Energy Summit is issuing a Call for Papers for its Technology Conference to be held in Anchorage, Alaska October 15-18, 2007. The Summit, an approved International Polar Year Program, is a US-led initative of the eight-nation Arctic Council amd is comprised of three components: * The technology conference and industry exposition which will bring together 600-1,000 researchers, academics, government leaders, students, industry, and residents of the Arctic; * The creation and deployment of an international Arctic energy action team whose recommendations will be reported at the 2008 Arctic Council Ministerial meeting in Norway; * An education and outreach component which will include a bilingual (Russian and English) summit website and, ...

Countries around the world are issuing special stamps to herald the arrival of International Polar Year 2007-2008. The initiative is being spearheaded by eight Arctic nations — the United States, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. In addition to the individual releases, a booklet of souvenir sheets will be issued containing all eight sets. The U.S. Postal Service will issue a souvenir sheet of two 84-cent international letter rate stamps which will also be issued as a pane of 20 under the title ‘Polar Lights’. In 1958, the United States issued a three-cent stamp to commemorate the International Geophysical Year 1957-58. ...

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The Arctic sea ice cover is undergoing significant climate-induced changes, resulting in a reduction in ice extent and a net thinning of the sea ice cover. During IPY researchers from 10 nations will be studying the properties and processes that govern this sea ice cover and exploring its role as an indicator and amplifier of climate change. Numerous techniques will be brought to bear on this task, including expeditions, satellite remote sensing, autonomous rovers, buoys, ocean moorings, and numerical models.

ICEFISH: International Collaborative Expedition to collect and study Fish Indigenous to Sub-antarctic Habitat.

The Antarctic and the sub-Antarctic offer natural laboratories for understanding the evolutionary impact of climate changes on the marine polar fishes, but there has been lack of access to sub-Antarctic fishes, critical for understanding evolution, population dynamics, eco-physiology and eco-biochemistry of their Antarctic relatives. ICEFISH, the first comprehensive international survey of the Sub-Antarctic marine habitat, is designed to fill these gaps.

The 2007-2008 International Polar Year (IPY) provides an international framework for improving our understanding of high-latitude climate change and enhancing our skill in predicting world-wide impacts. Recent, well documented observations of the dramatically changing high-latitude components of earth’s cryosphere (e.g., those areas where water is frozen either seasonally or permanently) make IPY science investigations particularly timely and relevant to scientists, policy makers and the general public. Effective IPY investigations require a range of commitments of resources: from providing support to individual field activities, to those which require the international coordination of complex systems and their operations. During IPY, to date considerable progress is being made towards characterisation of key high-latitude processes by means of spaceborne snapshots of the polar regions. A number of ongoing efforts are described below which are designed to coordinate these satellite acquisitions, to help demonstrate the benefits of a cryospheric observing system component, and to develop IPY data legacy comprising critical climate benchmarks.