This project – which involves scientists from two dozen countries – will examine how atmospheric processes in the Southern Hemisphere affect current climate, and provide an important baseline for assessing future climate change. COMPASS will obtain the first circumpolar snapshot of the Southern Hemisphere atmospheric environment – covering physical, chemical and ecological properties – a major observational milestone. Only by harnessing the resources of the global polar community can this multinational project achieve the depth of investigation required to improve knowledge of future climate change and its impacts.

IceCube is a neutrino observatory for astrophysics to be installed at the South Pole over seven austral summers ending in 2011. IceCube will look for extremely high-energy neutrinos coming from the northern sky whose sources are active galactic nuclei, supernova remnents, gamma-ray bursts, and active supernovae. The IceCube In-Ice detector will consist of a minimum of 4800 optical modules deployed on 80 vertical strings buried 1450 to 2450 meters under the surface of the ice, and an IceTop surface air-shower detector array comprised of a minimum of 320 optical modules. By early 2008, one half of the detector, 40 strings with 2400 optical modules, was collecting, storing and analyzing data. Weekly updates during the austral season, November-January, are posted here.

IceCube is an international project sponsored and conducted by the United States and several non-U.S. countries. The United States National Science Foundation supplies funds for the design, development, fabrication, procurement, testing, drilling and operations of the project at the South Pole.

STUDENTS ON ICE is an award-winning organization offering unique learning expeditions to the Antarctic and the Arctic. Our mandate is to provide students from around the world with inspiring educational opportunities at the ends of our earth, and in doing so, help them foster a new understanding and respect for our planet.

The Students on Ice - International Polar Year Youth Expeditions series has been endorsed by the IPY Joint Committee as a prominent and valued component of the IPY program. These special IPY-themed voyages to the Arctic and Antarctic offer once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to over 500 youth to explore the Polar regions!

These unique educational expeditions are designed for international high school and university youth. Participants will travel together with teams of polar scientists, experts and educators. The ice-strengthened ship-based expeditions will be unparalleled platforms for Polar and Environmental Education and outreach for the International Polar Year.

Recent changes in surface elevation and discharge speed in outlet glacier systems along the margins of the Greenland Ice Sheet have provided examples of dramatic localized shifts in the balance of ice discharge, surface melt, and accumulation. These rapid changes are in sharp contrast to relatively slow variations in surface elevation in the interior, which have been tied to accumulation and firn compaction variations on a decadal timescale. The challenge of documenting and attempting to understand the processes involved has motivated a large collection of proposed research projects aimed at this problem. These range from expansions of ongoing efforts to new projects, and from individual investigators to consortia from a number of nations. They utilize a range of observational and modeling techniques and exploit evolving capabilities in atmospheric modeling, remote sensing for measurement of ice motion and surface conditions, and surface-based and aircraft-based measurement techniques.

This project links together multidisciplinary interests in the region of West Antarctica where the ice sheet discharges into the Amundsen Sea. It is one of the most active ice sheet areas, is already contributing a significant fraction of the increasing sea level, and holds the potential to dwarf other sea level contributions in the future. Aside from routine satellite coverage that monitor elevation and surface features, information about the area is limited. Our project will greatly advance our knowledge of ice dynamics of the area, the basal conditions, sub-shelf oceanic interactions, atmospheric transport of incoming snow, and historical record of ice extent. These studies will be conducted with the direct intention of supplying the involved modeling experts with necessary data to construct, initialize and validate advanced full-stress tensor models of ice flow.

There is increasing recognition that multiple environmental changes are occurring in the northern regions of Europe. Some of these environmental changes, for example climate warming, levels of UV-B radiation, and habitat fragmentation, are projected to continue leading to impacts on the lands of the Nordic countries unprecedented since deglaciation some 10,000 year ago. Three ENVISNAR projects studying these processes are profiled below:

POLENET will deploy an ambitious array of geophysical instruments across the polar regions in order to study the complex interplay between climate, ice sheets, geodynamics, and global sea level change. POLENET geodetic and seismic observations, paired with other types of geophysical measurements, will greatly improve our understanding of high latitude Earth systems. This international collaboration of 24 countries will involve scientists, students and educators at all levels, and will further advance our capability to deploy autonomous instruments in extreme environments

CASO aims to enhance understanding of the role of the Southern Ocean in past, present and future climate, including the overturning circulation of the Southern Ocean, water mass transformation, atmospheric variability, ocean-cryosphere interactions, physical-biogeochemical-ecological linkages, and teleconnections between polar and lower latitudes. CASO will deliver improved climate predictions, from models that incorporate a better understanding of southern polar processes; proof of concept of a viable, cost-effective, sustained observing system for the southern polar regions; and provide a baseline for the assessment of future change.

SALE United International Team for Exploration and Discovery;

Subglacial Antarctic Lake Environments (SALE): A Unifying Phenomenon in Antarctic Earth Science

Beneath Antarctica's ice sheets, water has slowly accumulated over millenia pooling in catchment basins within the continental bedrock. Antarctic subglacial environments are natural macrocosms that, in some instances, trace their origins to more than 35 million years before present, when the continent became encased in ice. Life, especially microbial life, has successfully radiated into most aquatic habitats on Earth. There is little reason to doubt that subglacial environments are exempt from this process.The exploration and study of subglacial environments provides an unparalleled opportunity to advance our understanding of how the expression of life, the environment, climate evolution, and planetary history have combined to produce the world as we know it today.