Polar News and Notes Polar News & Notes

On March 20, the Spring Equinox, NASA invites a worldwide audience to observe Sun-Earth Day. Among the events planned is a webcast at 1:00 p.m. EST, featuring a panel of scientists, students monitoring the sun, and images and visualizations.  
With the theme Our Sun, Yours to Discover, the NASA Sun-Earth Connection Education Forum hopes to […]

March 18 will be the eighth quarterly Polar Day sponsored by the International Polar Year (IPY) organization to enable schools and other groups worldwide to join in celebration of polar research. The March theme is Polar Oceans.
Ocean-related activities will continue throughout the week of March 17-26. Resources provided by IPY include virtual balloon launches, activities […]

The 106 passengers and crew stranded when the adventure cruise ship Ocean Nova ran aground have been safely transferred to another ship.  The Clipper Adventure rescued the passengers and crew and is returning to Ushuaia, Argentina’s southernmost city, where the 15-day polar exploration originally began.
 The Ocean Nova ran into trouble in high winds near an Argentinian […]

You are invited to share your International Polar Year (IPY) activities and resources with other teachers at the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) conference, March 19-22, in New Orleans.
The Arctic Research Consortium (ARCUS) is organizing Teacher Share! A Share-a-Thon for Teachers Involved in IPY on Saturday, March 21, from 9 to 11 a.m. at […]

Tonight at 7pm EST we’re having an online chat in the TappedIn online learning community - http://tappedin.org. We’ll be working our way through the February 2009 issue of the Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears online magazine. If you can’t join us, you can still take “our tour” below. We meet the first Thursday of each month […]

On Wednesday, Feb. 4, Jessica Fries-Gaither will present “Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears: Integrating K-5 Science and Literacy” at the 2009 Educational Technology Conference in Columbus, OH. The presentation is scheduled for 2 pm in room C226. During the session, participants will be introduced to the Beyond Penguins project and the variety of technological tools […]

2008 tied with 2001 as the eighth warmest year on record, and climate change dominated polar news during the month of January.
A new comprehensive synthesis of past Arctic climates shows that temperature change is happening at a greater rate there than other places in the Northern Hemisphere. This warming is expected to continue, leading to […]

The Great Backyard Bird Count will take place February 13-16, 2009. The sponsors, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society, invite people of all ages throughout North America to contribute to knowledge about bird population trends.
Anyone, from novice bird watchers to experts, can participate by counting for as little as 15 […]

In early January, a coalition of more than 500 universities, K-12 schools, educators, scientific societies, science centers and museums, government agencies, advocacy groups, and others kicked off the Year of Science, or YoS2009. The Coalition on the Public Understanding of Science (COPUS) expects this yearlong recognition, with events scheduled across the country, will engage the […]

An exceptional polar expedition in an era of daring explorations of the far north and far south is featured in the January 2009 National Geographic magazine, “1,000 Days in the Ice.” The explorer, Fridtjof Nansen of Norway, was a neuroscientist, zoologist, artist, writer, and national hero, following his crossing of Greenland on skis, before he […]