Wow, what an incredible place this is – it goes way beyond my greatest expectations! I have been here a full week now, which has just flown by! We (26 of us) arrived by plane, having flown first to Cape Town, then down to Novolazarevskaya (a Russian base) where we camped overnight. We were met with such warm hospitality by the Russians and I was thrilled to see lots of IPY logos on the tents, the calendar, the planes – the list goes on and on!! What a great introduction to the Antarctic! Arriving at Halley Research Station was so exciting – we had a wonderful welcoming committee waiting for us and once we had unloaded all of our kit we were quickly shepherded off to our respective sleeping quarters to have a couple of hours of rest and relaxation and a cup of tea!...

Contents: 1. IPY Science Day: Ice Sheets, December 13th 2007 2. AGU 3. Data Coordinators 4. IPO in December 5. IPY Events and Conferences 6. Logos and Clothing 7. Two recent meetings 8. Blog on IPY.org From: IPY International Programme Office To: IPY Project Coordinators cc: IPY Community Google Groups 1. IPY Science Day: Ice Sheets, December 13th 2007 December 13th marks the second IPY Science Day, focussing on Ice Sheets. You can find information from more than 20 IPY Projects researching various aspects of Ice Sheets on ipy.org, as well as an educational flier, in 16 languages, and information for teachers and media. Show your involve...

Polar bear family feeding on a seal, Northwest Passage, 1999. © Hinrich Bäsemann, www.polarfoto.de In the September issue of Polar Research, the politics of science is one of the themes in an essay by historian Stian Bones, who examines Norway's role in past International Polar Years, starting with the first one in 1882-83. Bones describes the strengths of the scientific traditions of this polar nation, and he examines the varying motivations that have driven Norwegian involvement in International Polar Years. Also in this issue, scientometrician Prabir Dastidar presents the results of his research on sc...

This week, a Nordic tissue paper company called Metsa? Tissue, launched it's campaign announcing a one million kronor donation to IPY. The majority of these funds were directed to the IPY project, KINNVIKA , but about one third was used to support the first meeting of the International Youth Steering Committee and Association of Polar Early Career Scientists. The meeting was essential for bringing together key volunteers who have been working hard over the last two years to establish an international network of polar researchers, and aspiring polar researchers, between the undergraduate and early-career stages of their careers. At the meeting, the two groups agreed to merge under the common title: APECS, Association of Polar E...

Contents: 1. Report from the JC Meeting 2. IPO announcement 3. International Polar Days 4. Ice Sheet Day: December 13th 2007 5. AGU 6. EGU/SCAR-IASC 7. Call for 2012 Science and Policy Conference Venue From: IPY International Programme Office To: IPY Project Coordinators cc: IPY Community Google Groups 1. Report from Joint Committee Meeting The IPY Joint Committee held its 6th meeting in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada, on two days in late October. For most of one afternoon we joined the Canadian National IPY Committee to learn and discuss the many facets of Canada's IPY programme. The JC focussed on IPY legacies, and pa...

The IPY International Programme Office (IPO) has recently received some sponsorship to seed a meeting of the IPY International Youth Steering Committee (IYSC), including the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS). This meeting will occur in Stockholm at the end of September. Below is background material for this meeting. Meeting Details (252 KB DOC) includes participants, overview, agenda, and logistics Planning Information and Summary (128 KB PDF) APEC...

In order to share their enthusiasm for the IPY with other young people, a group of NZ young polar researchers (the NZ Youth Steering Committee for the IPY) ran a contest for secondary schools this year. Students were asked to design digital interactive educational materials that can be used to communicate the international importance of the Polar Regions to other people of their age group. The winners were officially announced last week at a ceremony held at Gateway Antarctica at Canterbury University. Second prize was awarded to Carina Donald from Middleton Grange School in Christchurch who received a $1...

IPY is possibly the largest and most interdisciplinary science project ever conducted. Tens of thousands of investigators from dozens of countries are collecting data in diverse disciplines in physical, life, and social sciences. The data management challenge presented by IPY is huge. The current approach to the challenge is through an informal global partnership of data centers, archives, and networks working to ensure proper stewardship of IPY and related data. This partnership is called the IPY Data and Information Service (IPYDIS) and a new web site, discussion forum, and help desk has been established at http://ipydis.org to help coordinate the effort. The IPYDIS seeks to actively engage and support the IPY community, as such, advice, critique, and suppo...

He recalls that his passion for the extreme probably began when he first saw the snow, during a school holiday at New Zealand's Tongariro National Park, at the age of sixteen. He was a young teenager living in the countryside and he had never seen the magic of snow. Since that day, Sir Edmund Hillary has spent a great deal of his life amid snow and ice, blizzards and storms, high snowy peaks close to the sky and turbulent rivers flowing down to the sea. In May 1953 he was the first to reach the summit of Mt Everest – with Tenzing Norgay. Thanks to that success another great adventure would keep him close to snow and ice for almost two years: the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition (TAE), a joint-venture between Great Britain and New Zealand that aimed to cross Antarc...

Very few places on Earth are lucky enough to be nicknamed "Gateway to Antarctica". They can be counted on the fingers of one hand: Hobart in Tasmania; Ushuaia in Argentina; Punta Arenas, overlooking the Straight of Magellan in Chile; Cape Town in South Africa and of course Christchurch, in New Zealand. It is from these locations that intrepid explorers and navigators have set sail to the Great Unknown, in search of the Terra australis incognita and beyond, to the magnetic South Pole and to the geographical South Pole. In those times there were no satellite images to tell you how the path would look like. In Antarctica, no native people could give clues to the explorers, nor help them with their own experience of survival, as with the Eskimos in the Arctic. Among these few...