photo credit: Alex Taylor We've been on this 'expedition' for a week now, half way through, and I can feel the dynamic shifting. Faces are pretty much all familiar and I'm not doing badly on names either... only a few students left whom I haven't had at least a brief conversation with. Amongst the students cliques have formed, as expected, but there is also a sense of change — more pondering, clearer questions, greater attentiveness, thoughtful poetry, and increasing questions about the educational content of the coming week. ...

Press release Bremerhaven August 7th 2008. The German Research Vessel Polarstern had to prove its ice breaking capabilities in Arctic waters to gain data on two series of long-term research measurements. After working in regions up to latitude 82° N, Polarstern of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association will enter port in Reykjavik (Iceland) on August 10th. “This year, we had to cope with exceptional heavy ice coverage”, says chief scientist Prof. Gerhard Kattner. The sea ice covered the Arctic almost down to latitude 72° in southern direction. Perpetual winds from the Northwest have moved the ice into the central area of the Fram Strait since the beginning of summer. The main focus of the expedition lied ...

Press release Bremerhaven August 7th 2008. The German Research Vessel Polarstern had to prove its ice breaking capabilities in Arctic waters to gain data on two series of long-term research measurements. After working in regions up to latitude 82

The intercom system has just announced that wake-up tomorrow has been postponed by half an hour to 8am. Everyone cheered. We have a happy, but very tired, shipful of folk today. It was a wonderful day, awe-some, in its true sense. In the morning we glided down Hirbilung Fjord, sheer cliffs on both sides, glaciers and waterfalls pouring off them. It was almost too much to take in, to process. For the first half hour on deck everyone milled, took photos, chatted, gaped... but what to do after that? How to take this in? Spontaneous groups of painters, writers, singers, players gradually filled the decks... a singsong on the back-deck, group games on the very top, somehow laughter and fun was the magic missing ingredient that made it all digestible again. In the afternoon we wer...

Another great day and we'll all go to sleep buzzing. Qikiqtarjuaq was fab: the people, the place, the food, the air, the weather, the crafts, the welcome, the kids. Kids everywhere, excited about strangers in their town, better yet, students. Craftspeople displaying sealskin hides, jewelry from bone and baleen, walrus tusk carvings, polar bear claws. The naturalists among us also came home with skulls from polar bear and walrus and, most impressive, narwhal tusk. NARWHAL TUSK. No, really. The first time I saw one, never having heard of a narwhal, I battled with my inner belief system. What from this earth could this beautiful spiralling ivory possibly have been created by if it wasn't a unicorn? I saw three or four on display today,- the smallest about the length of my fore-arm, the tall...

Today is the first full day of our expedition, and I have just returned from our first expedition of the expedition — a zodiac cruise around Hantsch island to observe a colony of thick-billed murres, or 'akpak' in Inuktitut. They are the Penguins of the North. Well, they look like penguins, but they fly. And genetically they're not penguins, they're part of the Auk family, like puffins and other black and white sea-birds. In fact, the thick-billed murre is the most abundant marine bird in the northern hemisphere. But they stay so far north that they are little appreciated or recognised. We also saw black-legged kittiwakes, really sweet looking seagulls. Amazing what you can learn when there's an ornithologist on board and a briefing before the outing. ...

Investigating sea ice decline A revised outlook for the Arctic 2008 summer sea ice minimum shows ice extent will be below the 2005 level but not likely to beat the 2007 record. DAMOCLES will dispatch eleven research missions into the Arctic this autumn to better understand the future of the sea ice. Chances that the 2008 ice extent will fall below last year's record minimum is about 8 percent, researchers forecast after having run a number of different models predicting the fate of the Arctic sea ice this summer. But there is still reason for concern; the scientists are almost certain the ice extent will fall below the minimum of 2005, which was the second lowest year on record. With a probability of 80% the minimum ice extent in 200...

Contents: 1. IPO in August 2. September 24th: People Day 3. Oslo Science Conference, June 2010: Call For Session Ideas 4. AGU 5. Arctic Field Season Report no. 16, August 2008 From: IPY International Programme Office To: IPY Project Coordinators cc: IPY Community Google Groups 1. IPO in August Please note that the IPO will not be working at full potential during the month of August as Nicola, Dave, and Rhian are away from the office at different times. Please be patient if the response time is slow, and call our mobile phone numbers if an immediate response is required. 2. September 24th: People Day The next Polar D...

I am traveling from Toronto to Ottawa and the train has just started moving. I'm passing a familiar skyline of the CN Tower, downtown, the Don Valley, and hopefully soon I'll see Lake Ontario on my right. I lived in Toronto for 5 years and though I haven't been back often, the scenery remains a home from home. Ottawa will be all new to me, and I'm glad to have grounded myself in the familiar for my first jet-lagged evening. I will be met by someone from Students On Ice at the train station, and presumably a handful of soon-to-be-friends also arriving on this route. (The heavens have opened, so much for my scenic train journey.) How do I feel? Excited, apprehensive, confident, intrigued, honoured, calm. I love th...

A new issue of the Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears magazine is ready to view! Issue Five, Water, Ice, and Snow, uses the polar regions to better understand the water cycle as well as states and changes of matter. As always, the issue includes: Science and Literacy content knowledge ...