The five members of the Svalbard Scientific Skiing Expedition, colloquially known as the “Frozen Five”, met in Grenoble last week for the final preparations before embarking on their 11 week voyage through the Arctic wilderness on the 29th March. We’re a group of graduate students of various geosciences that met at UNIS in Longyearbyen during our diverse university careers. From March-June 2007, we will be skiing across the length of Spitsbergen, Svalbard’s largest island. The route, measuring about 1000 km, will take us over numerous glaciers, patches of sea ice and through the territory of the polar bear. Through this expedition, we wish to share our passion for the Arctic regions with the general public and, in particular, high school students. Blo...

ATTENTION: News, Education Editors CONTACT: Tom Simons, University Communications, (402) 472-8514 This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ) Lincoln, Neb., Dec. 19, 2006 -- The Antarctic Geological Drilling (ANDRILL) Program drilled to a new record depth of 1,000 meters below the seafloor from the site on the Ross Ice Shelf near Scott Base in Antarctica Dec. 16. The depth made ANDRILL the most successful Antarctic drilling program in terms of depth and rock core recovered, breaking the previous record of 999.1 meters set in 2000 by the Ocean Drilling Program's drill ship, the Joides Resolution. The operations team of 25 drillers, engineers and support staff are justifiably thrilled, ANDRILL Project Manager Jim Cowie said. Antarctica New Ze...

ANDRILLs ARISE Program is seeking educators with a broad background in science activities and professional involvement indicating excellence in science education. All applicants must have at least 3 years science teaching experience in a K-16 school or institution, not including the current school year. ARISE (Antarctic Research Immersion for Science Educators) is a component of the ANtarctic geological DRILLing (ANDRILL) Program, which seeks to understand the geologic history of Antarctica through the study of core samples and data recovered from drilling below the seafloor at sites beneath the ice shelf and sea ice. The ARISE goal is to raise public awareness of Antarctic scientific drilling and integrate polar geosciences content into a wide range of learning environme...

ICEFISH: International Collaborative Expedition to collect and study Fish Indigenous to Sub-antarctic Habitat.

The Antarctic and the sub-Antarctic offer natural laboratories for understanding the evolutionary impact of climate changes on the marine polar fishes, but there has been lack of access to sub-Antarctic fishes, critical for understanding evolution, population dynamics, eco-physiology and eco-biochemistry of their Antarctic relatives. ICEFISH, the first comprehensive international survey of the Sub-Antarctic marine habitat, is designed to fill these gaps.

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.

SCAR-MarBIN supports the Antarctic science community by giving free and open access to an unprecedented mass of data relevant to understand Southern Ocean biodiversity. SCAR-MarBIN will leave a valuable legacy for future generations, in the form of an information tool that will provide a baseline reference for establishing a State of Antarctic Environment, and predicting the future for marine communities around Antarctica, which are currently facing global change.

We will study the responses of the terrestrial, aquatic and glacial communities of organisms, including the microbes, at both poles to global environmental changes. Our key questions include (a) diversity and biogeography, (b) food webs and ecosystem evolution, and (c) links between biological, chemical, and physical processes in icy ecosystems. This is a huge collaboration involving 17 nations and a wide range of field work.

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.

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.