*1st OSL-APECS-PYRN training workshop on permafrost research methods -- St. Petersburg, 30 Nov-2 Dec 2007 -- Full travel grants available to PYRN and APECS members* The Otto Schmidt Laboratory for Polar and Marine Research (OSL) at the State Research Center for Arctic and Antarctic Research (AARI) together with the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS) and the Permafrost Young Researchers Network (PYRN) are organising a training workshop on modern investigation techniques in the field of permafrost science (http://www.awi-potsdam.de/pyrn/oslworkshop.html). The workshop will be held from November 30 to December 2, 2007 in St. Petersburg,...

Mark your diaries: SEPTEMBER 21ST WILL BE THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL POLAR DAY, HIGHLIGHTING SEA ICE. IPY and Sea Ice Over 30 large, international IPY projects are studying some aspect of Sea Ice. This includes ship expeditions, remote sensing, sea ice ecosystems, the importance of sea ice to polar bears and marine mammals, climate research, exhibitions, and books. On September 13th, a web-page dedicated to Sea Ice will be published on www.ipy.org listing projects that are involved, real-time expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic, contacts for media, sources for images, and background information. There will also be educational and community activities including classroom...

Contents: 1) Joint Committee Assessment, for October 2007 2) AGU Sessions and Activities, for December 2007 3) IPY Science Day - 21 September 2007 4) IPY Youth International Planning Workshop, for September 2007 From: IPY International Programme Office To: IPY Project Coordinators cc: IPY Community Google Groups 1) Joint Committee Assessment The IPY Joint Committee will hold their sixth meeting in Canada in late October 2007. With most national funding decisions known, and with most IPY Projects underway or in late stages of planning, the Joint Committee will make an initial assessment of the overall programme. The IPY Expression of Interest (EoI) data...

Submitted September 2: So its been a long time since I wrote anything, or at least it feels like a long time. To be blunt, not a huge hell of a lot has happened since then. The main feature has been rain, a little more rain and then some more rain, followed by rain and a little bit of wind. We have managed to get another site installed and partially installed a couple of other sites, but weather has not been friendly. I think we last left off on the 23rd of August, something to do with a boat trip to Isertoq if I can remember that far back correctly. That was over a week ago, so what has happened since then? Hmm. We fixed the antenna at the Helheim site, same kind of deal as the last visit to Helheim, crammed into a 212 helicopter this time. The first and only time we've be...

To aid broad interdisciplinary discovery of IPY data, the IPY Data Policy and Management Subcommittee has created an initial metadata profile. A metadata profile is a set of required fields and vocabularies for a given metadata standard. The purpose of the IPY Metadata Profile is to ensure that we capture a bare minimum of information necessary to allow simple discovery across disciplines and to ensure we can track the heritage of the metadata in a broadly distributed data management environment. All IPY data registries and repositories collecting data and metadata from IPY projects are required to collect and share sufficient information to adhere to the IPY Metadata Profile requirements. Similarly, IPY projects are required to submit the compliant metadata t...

One of the most intriguing aspects of IPY is how broad it is. More than any other international program, IPY has emphasized interdisciplinary study. We seek greater understanding of how systems work as a whole. This systemic view requires that we find and assess data and information outside our area of expertise. Easier said than done. Different disciplines describe similar phenomena in different ways; they use different assumptions and metaphors; they treat error and uncertainty differently. Even when data are available, investigators struggle to find relevant data for their application. IPY cannot solve the whole problem of interdisciplinary data access, but we can make a major step forward. If an investigator can simply find and us...

In response to journalists and educators wanting an 'angle' on the extremely broad International Polar Year, quarterly "IPY Days" are being developed that focus on a particular aspect of polar research, and highlight current research occurring as part of IPY. The first of these will be held on September 21st and will focus on Sea Ice. Below is a list of IPY projects that study, or are concerned with, some aspect of Sea Ice. Their webpages contain a huge amount of information. For direct contact with researchers, please consult this list of sea ice experts. The following list includes IPY ID and chart name, and short title 8 ...

Conference Announcement and Call for Papers: Arctic Frontiers 20-25 January 2008, Tromso, Norway Abstract Submission Deadline: Sunday, 30 September 2007 For further information, please go to: http://www.arctic-frontiers.com or contact:

Final opportunity to submit an abstract to the AGU 2007 Fall Meeting

The German Youth Steering Committee was founded in 2006 to approach a young public about the current issues of polar research. Our website lists our activities. The members of the committee aim at bringing together an online network of young polar researchers, teachers and high school students. The committee assists teachers and students to integrate polar research in natural and social sciences and the arts with the curriculum. The focus on German is a decisive aspect of our project. Commonly available resources are compiled in English and are of limited use. At the moment, we coordinate presentations and discussions at high schools. We also make available brief (password-protected) presentations and articles for furt...