International Polar Year begins
March 1st saw the launch of International
Polar Year, a research collaboration that will bring together 50,000
scientists and support staff from 63 countries. Involving more than
200 projects, the "year" will run until March 2009 in order
to cover two full annual cycles in both the Arctic and Antarctic.
Not only are polar regions warming fastest and experiencing some of
the earliest effects of climate change, but they are also critical
for global climate. For example, conditions at the poles affect how
much heat is retained by the earth because of the reflective properties
of ice and snow, the world's ocean circulation depends on sinking in
polar regions, and melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets
could have drastic effects on sea level. Extracting ice cores also
provides valuable information about past climate.
"
The change of phase from snow and ice to water is the biggest tipping
point in the Earth's system and so, although International Polar Year
covers a huge range of science, for me the big issue is climate change
and the impact that it's having here," said Chris Rapley, director
of the British Antarctic Survey, in a video message from Antarctica. "Over
the next two years, I'm looking forward to major progress on key issues
such as 'How are the ice sheets responding?' and the trillion dollar
question from the point of view of sea-level rise, 'How much, how quickly?'"
Many of the larger International Polar Year projects will enable
the collation of data that is only possible to achieve if countries
pool
their capabilities. And the year will create sophisticated polar
observation systems that will still be available for use when International
Polar
Year itself is over. These include an integrated Arctic Ocean observing
system; a southern hemisphere observing system; links between providers
of bipolar satellite data; acoustic networks around both poles to
monitor the movement of marine mammals and fish; a set of permafrost
measurements
in boreholes; and a network of local observation sites that engage
some of the Arctic's 4 million residents.
"International Polar Year has allowed the international community
to talk to each other, build relations and pool resources internationally," said
Martin Siegert of the University of Edinburgh, speaking at the
UK launch of International Polar Year.
Thirty-three national committees are co-ordinating initiatives
for International Polar Year. The year has six scientific themes:
status,
an investigation of the current polar environment; change, which
looks at past and present environmental and social change in order
to improve
projections of the future; global linkages, which examines the
interactions between polar regions and elsewhere; new frontiers,
a program to
address scientific challenges such as understanding polar ecosystems
and exploring
regions beneath polar ice sheets; vantage point, which uses the
poles for observing space; and the human dimension, a group of
projects
looking at the sustainability of circumpolar human societies.
The last International Polar Year - also known as International
Geophysical Year - was in 1957-58. There were also polar years
in 1882-3 and
1932-3.
"The last time - in International Geophysical Year - we really
didn't know much about Antarctica," said Siegert. "We still
know very little about Antarctica and the Arctic but we now know it's
very
important."
This International Polar Year will contain a significant amount
of exploration work to find out more about the regions.
International Polar Year is sponsored by the International
Council for Science and the World Meteorological Organization.
About the author
Liz Kalaugher is editor of environmentalresearchweb.
http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/home
© Institute of Physics (the “Institute”) and IOP
Publishing Limited (“IOPP”) 2006
