The Circumpolar Flaw Lead (CFL) System Study is a major international effort under Canadian leadership that aims at understanding how changes in the physical system affect biological processes, towards a better understanding of the potential effects of climate change. The CFL project is part of the PAN-AME cluster.

The project HERMES is designed to gain new insights into the biodiversity, structure, function and dynamics of ecosystems along Europe's deep-ocean margin to underpin the future development of a comprehensive European Ocean and Seas Integrated Governance Policy. It represents the first major attempt to understand European deep-water ecosystems and their environment in an integrated way (geosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere of a pan-European range). HERMES aims to compare and contrast selected environments around the European margin from high northern latitudes (focus of this IPY proposal) to the Black Sea.

Sea level rise will be responsible for one of the most profound and costly impacts of climate change on human society, so gathering accurate data on sea levels worldwide is vitally important. Although sea level is monitored at hundreds of sites through the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission and World Meteorological Organization's Global Sea Level Observing System, there are large gaps in data from the Arctic and Antarctic because measuring sea level along polar coastlines is a huge technical challenge. By enhancing existing sea level gauges in the Antarctic, and installing new, high-tech devices in the Arctic that will provide high-frequency, real time data, this project will provide the missing piece of the jigsaw for scientists monitoring sea level rise across the globe. The same sea level data can also be used to monitor changes in the circulation of the high-latitude oceans, which in turn may provide clues as to why sea level is rising.

The SCAR-programme EBA (2004-13) will address the impacts of climate change on species biodiversity, evolutionary adaptations and depletion of marine fisheries on community dynamics in the Southern Ocean. A better understanding of the effect of such changes will be obtained by investigating the acclimatory responses to high latitudes. It will contribute to development of a baseline understanding of sensitive ecosystems.

Polar Heritage - once lost, it can never be regained. Protection and preservation of early scientific bases in polar regions. A multidisciplinary and international conference with presentations focussed on technical and administrative issues associated with the protection and preservation of historic scientific bases and in "Historic polar resources are disappearing! Once lost, it can never be regained. Protection and preservation of early scientific bases in polar regions. The age of discovery in polar regions also brought scientific research and soon the first non-indigenous structures were built. Regretably some of these historic sites have already been lost and more are under threat. The International Polar Heritage Committee IPY conference in Barrow Alaska, the site of one the first IPY scientific stations will assemble organisations and individuals working to protect these sites so they can share their expertise and experience to preserve them. "

Ice cores tell us how climate and atmospheric composition have varied in the past. IPICS will develop international plans for new projects on timescales from 2000 to over a million years. A focus in IPY will be on starting a core to bedrock in Greenland that aims to show us how the climate and ice sheet responded during the last warm interglacial period on Earth.