Good news for IPY and for our Danish colleagues! The Finance Committee of the Danish Parliament has approved additional funding for IPY. The following is an unofficial translation of the official notes associated with the approval of the IPY funding: 'In 2007-2009 the International Polar Year (IPY) will take place and on this background 30,000,000 DKK will be allocated in 2007 and in 2008 in order to accentuate the IPY opportunity. The funds will supplement the current grants for Arctic research and logistics support and will be issued by the Commission for Scientific Reseach in Greenland and the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation, respectively.' For more information, visit the ...

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. ...

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.

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.

During the IPY, the USGS will highlight numerous long-term studies of the polar regions on the state of the cryosphere (glaciers, permafrost, sea ice), the impacts of change over the last few decades, the petroleum resource potential of the Arctic, and the consequences of permafrost thawing on the Yukon River watershed in Alaska and Canada. Also, we will produce a high resolution Landsat mosaic image of Antarctica.

Plate tectonics and polar ocean gateways: The keys to understanding long-term global change Water mass exchange between world oceans is of great significance for long-term global climatic change and is controlled by tectonic and sedimentary evolution of oceanic gateways and basins. Reconstructions of the geological history of polar oceanic basins and gateways feed into computer simulations of climate change. PLATES & GATES is an international program focussing on the tectonic and sedimentary formation of those areas of the Arctic and Antarctica which are in particular critical for global change.

Microorganisms – including algae, bacteria, fungi and viruses – are numerically by far the most important group of organisms in polar aquatic ecosystems. As well as being the main drivers of biogeochemical cycles and the major producers and consumers of greenhouse gases, they are also sensitive barometers of environmental change. Yet very little is known about their role in ecosystems or their response to change. Working in both the Arctic and Antarctic with a broad range of techniques, including state-of-the-art molecular methods, this project will assess the diversity and make up of this microbial world. It will significantly advance understanding of the diversity and activity of these organisms and their role in climate and global environmental change.

Thermal State of Permafrost Permafrost conditions underlie upwards of 25% of the Earth's land surface. Permafrost temperatures are a function of past and present climates and vary greatly depending on location. Lacking is a comprehensive set of pemafrost measurements against which to assess present and future regional and global changes. Duirng IPY, TSP researchers will obtain a "snapshot" of permafrost temperatures in hundread of borehole throughout the world.

Integrated Data and Information Services IPY projects cover a broad range of physical, life, and social sciences. The data from these projects will be unprecedented in their breadth and diversity and will be the primary legacy of IPY. Data management is the key to preserving and building on that legacy. The IPYDIS is the responsible for managing this immense and diverse volume of data and addressing substantial challenges in the evolution of scientific values, methods, and cooperation.