In preparation, a special webpage www.ipy.org 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.-International Council for Science
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