Overview The IPY sea ice workshop will bring together participants of the SIPEX and SIMBA cruises conducted in the Antarctic in spring 2007, as well as others interested in Antarctic sea ice processes, modelling and remote sensing.  Ground-truthing of remote sensing will be a major emphasis as specific RADARSAT and ICESat missions coincided with the cruises, as well as an archival campaign for Envisat ASAR imagery.  There are currently 35 confirmed attendees. The schedule will allow for parallel breakout sessions to facilitate discussion on topics of interest to workshop participants, and the plenary session on the first day will afford all participants an opportunity to propose discussion topics. One outcome of the workshop will be a final list of papers for the ...

LOHAFEX: An Indo-German iron fertilization experiment What are the effects on the ecology and carbon uptake potential of the Southern Ocean? Bremerhaven, January 13th 2008. The German research vessel Polarstern is currently on its way to the Southwest Atlantic Sector of the Southern Ocean. The team of 48 scientists (30 from India) on board left Cape Town on 7th January to carry out the Indo-German iron fertilization experiment LOHAFEX (LOHA is Hindi for iron, FEX stands for Fertilization EXperiment). About two weeks will be required to reach the area and carefully select a suitable location, after which a patch of 300 square kilometres will be fertilized with six tons of dissolved iron. This will lead to rapid growth of the minute, unicellular algae known as phytoplan...

The Sustaining Arctic Observing Networks (SAON) report 'Observing the Arctic' is now ready for distribution. The presented conclusions have developed during a series of workshops involving 350 Arctic researchers, representatives of inter-governmental, national and subnational government agencies, representatives of indigenous peoples organizations, and residents of the Arctic. This process, referred to as the SAON-process, was initiated as a response to the request from Arctic Council ministers at their meeting in Salekhard, Russia in November 2006. The report was drafted by the SAON Initiating Group and is directed to organizations, agencies, governments, networks and programs involved in all aspects of Arctic observing. ...

Having been able to survive in the harsh Arctic climate for millennia, indigenous Northern communities have extensive intimate knowledge about the Arctic ecosystems in which they live. Increasingly, researchers are taking advantage of this wealth of knowledge to help them study the ecosystems of the Far North and how climate change is affecting them. One programme to monitor ice cover being run by the Nunavik Research Centre (NRC), the research arm of Québec's ...

An Italian Teacher's experience in Antarctica, by Graziano Scotto di Clemente. Italian Translation I am an Italian Science teacher. I am working in a lower secondary school (11-14 year old pupils), for the past 30 years, in Treviso, a town near Venice (North Italy). I am interested in science education, science history, and environmental activities.

 

 

An Italian Teacher's experience in Antarctica, by Graziano Scotto di Clemente.



Italian Translation

I am an Italian Science teacher. I am working in a lower secondary school (11-14 year old pupils), for the past 30 years, in Treviso, a town near Venice (North Italy). I am interested in science education, science history, and environmental activities. I participated in the ARISE – Andrill project during the 2007 October/December expedition in Antarctica (McMurdo Station).

ANDRILL (ANtarctic geological DRILLing) is a multinational collaboration comprised of more than 200 scientists, students, and educators from four nations (Germany, Italy, New Zealand, and the United States) to recover stratigraphic records from the Antarctic margin.

The chief objective is to drill back in time to recover a history of paleoenvironmental changes that will guide our understanding of how fast, how large, and how frequent glacial and interglacial changes were in the Antarctic region. Future scenarios of global warming require guidance and constraint from past history that will reveal potential timing frequency and site of future changes.

ANDRILL has established an immersion experience for science educators (ARISE) to facilitate development of mechanisms and materials to effectively connect ANDRILL with the public.

During the 2007-2008 I planned on conducting a geology field trip and museum visits with his classes to observe and understand the geological evolution after the last Ice Period. I planed to use observations of everyday objects like refrigerators, air conditioners, petrol engines... to build intuitive links among entropy and energy, using software models to study the most important connections among the living beings in a habitat. I planed on doing creative science fiction writing with my class, as well as comic strips and drawings set in critical moments of prehistory or in the future, and presenting collected information and findings of the polar research through simple performances.

From Antarctica I worked with some Italian schools on the Polar topics, expecially geology to explain what the Andrill core told to the researchers.

For my pupils I prepared some materials on Antarctica, especially to suggest to them some reflections on the hypothetical influences of the climate changes.

An interesting didactic experience was organized by the Arise team in the McMurdo Station for the workers of the base.

This exibition was created by the group of teachers and scientists who are working in Mc Murdo Station to show and to explain to the other workers and people of the Antarctic base what the significance, the tecnology and the scientific topics of the Andrill project are. For the Arise group it could be a good test of our didactic ideas on a simple itinerary on polar science for pupils. The main challenge: to be able to explain and to show the net of knowledges, the collaborations between different disciplines to understand what happened in the past and what can happen in the future (other informations and photos in http://www.exhibitfiles.org/andrill ).

Some materials (in Italian) are on our school website: http://www.scuolastefanini.it (click on “Antartide” in the upper menu).

During this year in my school we are working on the CO₂ emissions and our carbon footprinters, comparing the “Human habitats” of the pupils of different schools: North Italy, Greece, Poland, Estonia, inside an European project that we have called “SMILe, Science and Mathematics Interactive Learning” (http://smile.kornelowka.com – in progress…).

An article written by Graziano on his experience can be downloaded in both English and Italian.

Content: 1. IPY after February 2009 2. Promoting your project in February, 2009 3. Polar Days 4. APECS 5. AGU Report Report no. 21, January 2009 From: IPY International Programme Office To: IPY Project Coordinators cc: IPY Community Google Groups 1. IPY after February 2009 Colleagues and friends regularly ask us what the "IPY plan" is for 2009 and 2010, and "What will happen to the IPO?". The answer for IPY varies by country and project. Some countries will hold closing events in February and March this year. Other national programmes will continue IPY research through Arctic 2009 and Antarctic 2009/2010 seasons and beyond, driven by financial and logist...

My name is Henry Stanislaw and I am from the USA. Together with Maria Puig Ribas from Spain, Nora Hasselbach and Vincent Butty from Switzerland, Alexandra Le Dily from France and Carlien Wolmarans from South Africa, I joined the Young Explorer Program within Mike Horn’s PANGAEA Expedition. This program is created to introduce young adults to exploration, but also to scientific working and learning about the environmental conditions and threats. The first trip in this program took us to Antarctica. Mike is starting his expedition here, where he will walk alone from the Peninsula to the South Pole and back. For all of us this is the first contact with a polar environment. We started in Ushuaia / Tierra del Fuego, South ...

British Antarctic Survey, 29th April - 1st May 2009 The first in a series of themed events to be held over the next two years for early career polar researchers, this workshop will combine the themes of polar atmosphere and climate modelling. Career development sessions will be interspersed between lectures, practical sessions and problem solving workshops. Ideas for sessions are listed below - this unique event allows the participants to have a say in the programme to ensure it is as relevant as possible to those present. All participants are encouraged to present a poster, and will be given the opportunity to help in the organisation of the workshop, such as by chairing sessions. This event is free for all members of the UK Polar Network...

AGU 2008 Fall Meeting Media advisory: Tuesday, 16 December 0900h Continuing climate changes in the Arctic received renewed scientific attention during the International Polar Year (IPY) — a scientific research campaign focused on the Arctic and Antarctic, which is slated to end in early 2009. This briefing presents early results from a range of Arctic studies conducted during IPY based on climate models and new observations taken from sea, land, and space. Findings include the discovery of new seeps of the greenhouse gas methane along the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, large increases in tundra greenness along North America's Arctic coasts, a lengthening snowmelt season and a second year of ice mass loss in Greenland, and evidence that the predicted amp...

Zhongshan Station serves as the logistical hub of Chinese scientific research activities in East Antarctica and in the near future it will be a support platform for the new Kunlun Station to be constructed at Dome A. Situated in a small ice-free coastal region between the ice sheet and the ocean, Zhongshan Station serves as a base for scientists conducting research at the station and out in the field. In his latest report, SciencePoles reporter Je...