We’ve dealt with the Agulhas Current in blog posts #1, #3, and #5, but by now we’ve been out of the Agulhas for quite a while. We’ve been cruising due south along Longitude 30 East in the Southern Ocean and have been moving over and through a variety of water masses. With its powerful eastward-flowing Antarctic Circumpolar Current and, further south...

ITASE Synthesis Workshop Castine, Maine 2-5 Sept. 2008 Purpose: To integrate and synthesize research produced by ITASE (International Trans Antarctic Scientific Expedition) and associated scientific activities. Goals: To take Antarctica from the most sparsely sampled continent with respect to instrumental era climate to the best sampled for the last 200-1000 years, because of the extremely critical role that Antarctic climate change plays in global climate change (oceans, atmosphere, biological systems), and for the purpose of refining predictions of future climate change.To determine where and how Antarctic physical and chemical climate has or has ...

April 28-May 1, 2008 Houghton, Michigan USA This is the first announcement for the 2008 Workshop of the LASHIPA (Large-scale historical exploitation of Polar Areas) group. An international organization centered around the historical and archaeological study of industrialization in Polar Areas, the LASHIPA group has cooperated successfully on several seasons of research and teaching based in fieldwork on Svalbard (see www.lashipa.nl for details). LASHIPA members have garnered research funding from several national agencies and continue to pursue support for joint efforts during the next two years, at minimum. LASHIPA has been officially sanctioned as an IPY research activity, with explicit attention to international cooperation and...

Feb. 26, 2008: What started as a quick idea to spice-up an International Polar Year event has resulted in a full-length musical composition in celebration of polar science and the uniqueness of the north. University of Alaska Fairbanks Associate Professor James Bicigo recently completed a composition for brass ensemble based on his “Polar Fanfare,” which premiered at UAF’s IPY kick-off celebration last year. The full-length piece, titled “Polar Synthesis” includes five movements, each based on a northern theme. “The movements are titled Polar Fanfare, Aurora, Polar Bears, Break up- Climate Change and Synthesis- Understanding,” says Bicigo. “I’m really excited about the way the last movement ties together the themes from the fi...

In late December, Dr. Elena Sparrow of the UArctic IPY Higher Education and Outreach Office at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) was pleased to help welcome Dr. Rhian Salmon, coordinator of education and outreach activities at the IPY International Programme Office in Cambridge, UK, as Rhian celebrated the new year with her first-ever trip to Alaska. Her two-and-a-half-week stay was filled with meetings, tours, and presentations, along with generous doses of Alaskan hospitality, as she became better acquainted with the IPY research and outreach activities in the state. Most of Rhian’s time was spent in Fairbanks, in Alaska’s interior. There she had numerous meetings and discussions with researchers, administrators and other staff at the University of Alaska Fairba...

In late December, Dr. Elena Sparrow of the UArctic IPY Higher Education and Outreach Office at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) was pleased to help welcome Dr. Rhian Salmon, coordinator of education and outreach activities at the IPY International Programme Office in Cambridge, UK, as Rhian celebrated the new year with her first-ever trip to Alaska. Her two-and-a-half-week stay was filled with meetings, tours, and presentations, along with generous doses of Alaskan hospitality, as she became better acquainted with the IPY research and outreach activities in the state. Most of Rhian’s time was spent in Fairbanks, in Alaska's interior. There she had numerous meetings and discussions with researchers, administrators and other staff at the University of Alaska Fairba...

Database: The Antarctic Master Directory (AMD) Link: http://www.usap-data.org/ IPY Benefit: Facilitate international collaboration by making it easier to find US data and submit records. Abstract: The AMD is a database of metadata records for research projects supported by the US Antarctic Program. Submission to it is mandatory for all NSF/OPP/ANT projects. The AMD uses NASA’s Global Climate Change Master Directory (GCMD) to house the records; but unfortunately the GCMD’s input and search capabilities are not user friendly for Antarctic work. Under this award, the Lamont group is developing a new portal that includes a map interface to find records. In terms of intellectual merit, this approa...

Background From 1999-2003, I attended Mary Washington College, now known as the University of Mary Washington, in Fredericksburg, Virginia. I'm originally from New York. After graduating high school in 1999, I was anxious to get out of the state and try something new. I was spoiled rotten at MWC because they opened up a brand new science center my first fall semester and had state-of-the-art facilities and equipment. I had four passions in college: music, art, theatre and chemistry. I did my best to satisfy them all through classes and extra-curricular work but ultimately decided to ...

Kansas is proclaiming Tuesday, February 19 as Polar Education and Research Day. The governor of Kansas will sign a proclamation recognizing the importance of Polar Education and Research. The text is below. TO THE PEOPLE OF KANSAS, GREETINGS: WHEREAS, The world has banded together for the fourth time in history to jointly pursue science at the Earth's extreme latitudes as part of the International Polar Year; and WHEREAS, Kansans, since Lewis Lindsey Dyche in the late 1800s have participated in that scientific exploration, a rich tradition that extends to today's Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets, headquartered at the University of Kansas; and WHEREAS, These engineering and scientific efforts can serve to excite yo...

Submitted Feb 17: Among western boundary currents, the Agulhas flowing south along East Africa is 2nd only to the Gulf Stream in strength. It carries hundreds to thousands of times the water volume of the Mississippi River. Opposing waves generated by storms off Antarctica can be anomalously large. In meeting the thrust of the Agulhas Current, anomalies can be magnified to produce “rogue” waves of enormous proportions. Any given western boundary current’s volume is appreciably exceeded by that of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC), also called the West Wind Drift (WWD). It circles Antarctica west to east and dominates the Southern, or Antarctic, Ocean.The ACC is the granddaddy of surface currents and the only major surface current having the geogra...