After two and half months of constant strain and uncertainty, it seemed that the Aurora's fate was finally sealed . . . [Wireless Operator Lionel Hooke] observed that 'The whole crew are like a pack of schoolgirls, our nerves absolutely shattered. The dropping of a book or the slamming of a door brings us all up with a start.' Such was the lamentable scene onboard Aurora, during Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (ITAE). Her odyssey in the Ross Sea is vividly brought to life in Stephen Haddelsey's new book, Ice Captain: The Life of J.R. Stenhouse (The History Press Ltd.; ISBN: 0750943483). After she was blown away from Cape Evans by a fierce gale in May 1915, stranding the shore party, Stenhouse's Aurora drifted helplessly for ...

The aims of AntonyJinman.com are three-fold: To promote Education through Expedition To report credible eye witness accounts of climate change To promote sustainable technology for the future. "Through exploring remote locations around the world I aim to highlight environmental issues within the classroom. Expedition takes us to places that few people have been to. To travel to a place and experience such environments first hand is so much more powerful than reading a textbook in a classroom. Through use of film and photography I aim to share these experiences, to educate and inspire. " ...

Cape Farewell Press Release press release PDF Musicians including KT Tunstall, Vanessa Carlton, Laurie Anderson, Feist, Jarvis Cocker, Martha Wainwright and Robyn Hitchcock join a 40 strong crew of artists and scientists on Cape Farewell's Disko Bay expedition to the west coast of Greenland Thursday 25 September 2008http://www.capefarewell.com/ Monday 6 October Musicians Laurie Anderson, Vanessa Carlton, Jarvis Cocker, Feist, Robyn Hitchcock, Ryuichi Sakamoto, KT Tunstall, Martha Wainwright, Luke Bullen, Beatboxer Shlomo, Composer Jonathan Dove, Comedian Marcus Brigstocke, Theatre Makers Mojisola Adebayo, Suzan-Lori Parks, Artists Kathy Barber, David Buckland, Sophi...

A 150-meter ice core pulled from the McCall Glacier in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge this summer may offer researchers their first quantitative look at up to two centuries of climate change in the region. The core, which is longer than 1 1/2 football fields, is the longest extracted from an arctic glacier in the United States, according to Matt Nolan, an associate professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Institute of Northern Engineering who has led research at McCall Glacier for the past six years. The sample spans the entire depth of the glacier and may cover 200 years of history, he said. “What we hope is that the climate record will extend back into the Little Ice Age,said Nolan. “Up until the late 1800s these glaciers were actually gr...

On the occasion of the 31st Antarctic Treaty Consultative meeting held in Kiev, Ukraine, from the 2nd to the 13th of June 2008, SciencePoles looks at one of the lasting legacies of the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-08: A series of high-tech scientific research stations recently completed, or in the process of being constructed in Antarctica. Never since the International Geophysical Year of 1957-58 has the frozen continent seen suc...

From May 15-24, 2008, science centers worldwide are joining forces with local students for an international, educational event about the importance of the Polar ice caps. To fully understand how these regions are critical to helping the Earth maintain its climate through their reflection of the sun's rays (a process called albedo), youngsters will create large white spots using available material. At a scheduled time determined by optimum overpass angle, NASA satellites will pass overhead, measuring the reflectivity of these white spots and recording images of the white spots. On June 9, the World Ocean Network will participate in the Albedo Experiment as part of its World Ocean Week closing ceremony. ...

On Christmas Eve morning 2007, as I listened intently to the steady and pleasing voice of 85-year-old William H. "Tommy" Thomson, I detected only a faint accent — not what one usually encounters with a Scottish native. Sensing a story, I asked Thomson about his accent, and his past began to roll smoothly off his lips. In the early years of the Second World War, Thomson was at Glasgow University — and bored. Since the nearest recruiting station was a naval one, that's where he ended up. Given his education standard, it was suggested he try for the Fleet Air Arm, and Thomson duly became an officer in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR). The obvious necessity for clear radio communications while flying meant only one thing: the suppression of Thomson's Sco...

The Arctic Social Indicators (ASI) project is an IPY project and is following up on the activities of the Arctic Human Development Report (AHDR), and is initiated by the Stefansson Arctic Institute, Akureyri, Iceland, which also hosts the secretariat. ASI has been endorsed by the Arctic Council.

By Jan Strugnell, British Antarctic Survey The last few days we have been searching for suitable coring sitesand coring for the geologists for the BAS CACHE-PEP-G program. This focus of this program is to investigate the last 10, 000 years of Earth history and specifically how the Antarctic climate has interacted with the global climate. The program uses ice cores, lake sediments and marine sediments to build up this picture. Photo: Corethron criophilum, a diatom. On this cruise, the geologists are trying to find marine sediments that have built up over the last 10,000 years. Marine sediments are b...

By Jan Strugnell, British Antarctic Survey Although the majority of the trawling is now completed for the biologists on board, the work has not stopped! There is still plenty of activity in the laboratories and computer rooms to process all of the samples. Steffi, Dave and Adrian have been spending a lot of time looking down their microscopes sorting the animals that were caught in the Epibenthic sledge (EBS). The animals caught in the EBS typically range in size from 7 mm to 70 cm, although it must be said that some of the largest animals we caught were also captured in the EBS, including a sea cucumber at least 50 cm long! We are lucky that we have a number of taxonomic experts on board to sort the animals. We have experts on polychaetes (Adri...