International Polar Year: Start Your Engines

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White "Black Bears"

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International Polar Year has begun, and thousands of scientists will begin working on some 220 projects that will become the largest single effort to understand the impact of the globe's polar regions on the entire planet.

If you are involved in IPY, or have a friend or family member who is, please consider uploading photos. If you tag them IPY everybody will be able to find them.

Have a look at the photos which are just coming in.

One of our newest contributors, Andy Revkin, a reporter from the New York Times, has submitted a photo of one of his trips to the Arctic while on assignment, and for his book,

Here's his version of the launch of IPY from today's NY Times:

With a budget of about $350 million spread over more than 120 projects, researchers will camp on drifting Arctic Ocean sea ice and trek to largely uncharted Antarctic mountains.

They will use gliding underwater robots, giant icebreaking ships, satellites and other technologies to explore polar climate, biology, geology and ocean chemistry, and they will undertake physics and astronomy studies that can be done only at the poles.

A central goal of the effort — called the International Polar Year despite its two-year timetable — is to clarify the role of greenhouse gases and global warming in the rapid changes that are already occurring at both poles.

In the Arctic, sea ice in summer has been in an accelerating retreat. In parts of Antarctica that are warming, coastal ice shelves and inland ice sheets have been disintegrating and surging seaward in ways that
could hint at a faster rise in global sea levels in coming decades.

 

International Polar Year (IPY) will see thousands of scientists, from more than 60 nations, working together on 220 projects at high latitudes.

Scientists hope to improve their understanding of how changes to the polar regions affect the planet.

IPY will be officially launched in Paris on 1 March, but the UK's programme, involving 65 institutions, was unveiled on Monday in London.

IPY actually runs for two years in order to allow equal coverage of both the Arctic and the Antarctic.

It is organised by the International Council for Science (ICSU) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Source: news.bbc.co.uk