On March 12th, 2008, the International Polar Year (IPY) will launch its third 'International Polar Day', focusing on our Changing Earth; with a specific focus on Earth history as discovered through paleoclimate records that study the long term history of the Earth by analysing ice sheets and sediments below polar lakes and oceans.
In preparation, a special webpage has been prepared with information for Press and Educators, details of current projects, contact details for scientists around the world, including in the polar regions, images, background information and useful links and resources.
To better understand the impacts of human-induced climate change requires close awareness of natural forces of planetary change. In the 4.6 billion year history of our planet, the present arrangement of cold ice-covered regions at the northern and southern poles represents a recent development. An unprecedented combination of continental positions and orbital conditions has allowed the current ʻicehouseʼ climate to develop. It has also stimulated, within the past 1 million years, an oscillation of ʻrapidʼ glacial and interglacial events. Within this global icehouse condition, cycles of ocean atmosphere interaction have given rise to regional climate variations on scales of decades to centuries.
While almost every IPY project studies some aspect of the changing climate, or its impacts, thirteen of them specifically look at change over a geological timescale, which would help put current observations into long-term context. The next International Polar Day focusing on our Changing Earth represents an opportunity to learn more about these projects and to talk to the experts directly about their research. There will also be a wide range of educational and community activities, including classroom experiments, a virtual balloon launch, and live web-conferencing with the scientists in both the Arctic and the Antarctic.
About IPY and International Polar Days
The International Polar Year 2007-8 is a large international and interdisciplinary coordinated research effort focused on the polar regions. An estimated 50,000 participants from more than 60 countries are involved in research as diverse as anthropology and astronomy, health and history, and genomics and glaciology. This fourth IPY was launched in March 2007, and will continue through early 2009. During this time, a regular sequence of International Polar Days will raise awareness and provide information about particular and timely aspects of the polar regions. These Polar Days will include press releases, contacts to experts in several languages, activities for teachers, community participation, web-conferencing events, and links to researchers in the Arctic and Antarctic.
If the poles melt along with the permafrost there will be a large release of carbon trapped there. The positive feedback may lead to uncontrolled warming. Take a denier to lunch on the 12th. Buy them a copy of this book, Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet. Get their promise to read the book. Remind the politicians that we're rapidly running out of time where we can slow warming. The science is solid, the political will is lacking.
