IPY launch events around the world can be viewed live at the Arctic Portal. We also encourage everyone to launch a virtual balloon and show how many people around the world care about the polar regions and are interested in IPY. Everyone is welcome to join in, young or old, polar or tropical! The Official Opening Ceremony takes place in Paris at 11am local time. That is UTC 10:00, or, 1am in Anchorage, 5am in New York, 7am in Santiago, 3.30pm in Calcutta, 7pm in Tokyo, and 9pm in Sydney. You can watch it live or after the event on the web at the Arctic Portal, where you will also find webcasts of other national launch events from around th...

Watch IPY launch events on-line at the Arctic Portal and elsewhere. Throughout this week, over twenty nations around the world are celebrating the launch of the International Polar Year 2007-2008. New Zealand, Indigenous People, Argentina, and the Ukraine have already held extremely successful events. This week, Monday will see Press and Participants gathering in London, Strasbourg, and Washington DC, and Portugal will be holding their kick-off event on Wednesday. Thursday is the big day, with the Global Launch occurring in Paris at 1000 UTC (1100 local Central European Time) and national celebrations in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Greenland, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Norway, ...

The Permafrost Young Researchers Network (PYRN) is hosting its kick-off meeting at the Abisko Scientific Research Station, Sweden on the 22nd to 24th of February 2007. PYRN (www.pyrn.org) is an international effort under the patronage of the International Permafrost Association (IPA) to bring young permafrost researchers together during the international polar year and beyond. The first phase of the PYRN project saw more than 300 young researchers from 31 countries join the network. It rapidly became the largest young researcher-driven network in the field of cryospheric science. PYRN offers, news, information and support to its members. It has sent 17 monthly newsletters since its start in 2005, maint...

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.

The SFI Gdynia Aquarium, will be used to popularise polar regions and demonstrate the necessity of their conservation. We will exhibit polar marine organisms, determine border and optimal breeding conditions, create an aquarium ecosystem of small invertebrates with a closed food chain, and identify their breeding cycle. We will also improve the educational exhibits, prepare multimedia presentations, conduct educational programs, and organize lectures with polar scientists and explorers.

Plate tectonics and polar ocean gateways: The keys to understanding long-term global change Water mass exchange between world oceans is of great significance for long-term global climatic change and is controlled by tectonic and sedimentary evolution of oceanic gateways and basins. Reconstructions of the geological history of polar oceanic basins and gateways feed into computer simulations of climate change. PLATES & GATES is an international program focussing on the tectonic and sedimentary formation of those areas of the Arctic and Antarctica which are in particular critical for global change.

ICESTAR & International Heliophysical Year (IHY) - Interhemispheric Conjugacy in Geospace Phenomena and their Heliospheric Drivers High energy particles from space generate the Aurora and illustrate why the polar regions are unique places for space research. Throughout IPY scientists from 22 countries, using instruments on balloons, ships, spacecraft and the ground will investigate how plasma and magnetic fields from the Sun affect near-Earth space and our atmosphere, improving our understanding of the impact of space weather on satellites, ground-based technology, terrestrial weather and climate.

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.