Polar News and Notes International Polar Year

This July, a team of four scientists, a writer and a photographer from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the University of Washington will return to Greenland for their third year of investigating glacial lakes, which form atop the ice sheet each spring and summer. The expedition runs from July 7 to 24.
From their tents […]

News from the polar regions in June includes speculation on the future of the Arctic sea ice and permafrost, unexpected behavior of an Antarctic ice stream, and new technology designed to assist in polar research. Missed these stories the first time? Read on!
In May, we reported on an international, three-week expedition designed to validate the […]

What’s happening under and inside the masses of ice in the polar regions is of great interest to scientists. Recently researchers in West Antarctica have found that one ice stream–a region of the ice sheet that moves faster than the surrounding ice—jerks along in an earthquake-like pattern equivalent to a magnitude 7 quake.
Their findings ran […]

Jeff Peneston, a PolarTREC teacher, Program Director of Camp Fire USA (Camp Talooli), and a 9th grade Earth Science teacher, is traveling to Antarctica on the International Expedition of the Icebreaker Oden. He has created his own expedition flag as well as a special Camp Talooli Antarctic Expedition flag, and is initating a flag exchange […]

This summer 75 teenagers, ages 14-19, will sail to the Arctic with a team of scientists, environmentalists and polar educators in the Students on Ice program. The Arctic expedition, August 2-17, will explore southern Baffin Island, Nunavut, and the northern reaches of Nunavik in Quebec province. The itinerary includes workshops, lectures and seminars as well […]

During the last full week of May, science centers all over the world joined with area students to create “ice caps” from available white materials. At a scheduled time, the large white spots will be measured for reflectivity by NASA satellites. The effort, called the Albedo Experiment, is designed to increase public awareness of the […]

News from the polar regions in May includes continued trouble for Arctic sea ice and the marine mammals that depend on it for survival, research efforts in the Arctic, and analysis from the past Antarctic field season. Missed these stories the first time? Read on!
Data released from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration indicates that […]

Nancy Etchemendy
On May 26, 2008, published author Nancy Etchemendy will embark on the journey of a lifetime: the first of two research expeditions to Antarctica. On her blog, Etchmendy describes how an “unlikely series of events” resulted in an invitation to join the marine biology expeditions. The trip in May is a month-long voyage aboard the National […]

Six musk ox are roaming along the shores of the Chukchi and northern Bering Seas wearing their new GPS collars.
The Wildlife Conservation Society and other groups outfitted the animals to study how climate change may affect them. Next year in the four-year project, the research team will collar an additional 30-40 more animals.
“Musk ox are […]

A new month brings a new issue of the Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears cyberzine! The online magazine is written for elementary teachers to help develop their content knowledge of the polar regions and use best practices in integrating science and literacy instruction. Our second issue is called “Polar Patterns: Day, Night, and Seasons” and […]