Fundació Caixa Catalunya in collaboration with the American Museum of Natural History is organizing a traveling exhibition entitled "Trapped in the Ice: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition" containing the original pictures taken by James Francis Hurley during the 1914 expedition. This exhibition also presents information about the scientific research and current situation in Antarctica, together with details about the International Polar Year 2007-2008. The exhibition is accompanied by a series of lectures and educational activities addressed to primary and secondary students. This exhibition is touring Spain for two years, coinciding with the International Polar Year, traveling to Valencia, Jerez, Palma de Mallorca, Valladolid, Sevilla, Barcelona, Zaragoza, Castellon, Alicante, Logroño and Madrid.
source

In between, at the foot of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge - the longest mountain range in the world that rises from a tectonic boundary on the Atlantic seafloor - stands Iceland's newest geothermal power station. It's a chic edifice of glass and steel that attracts tens of thousands of visitors a year who come to see how Icelanders heat and power their nation largely without the use of fossil fuels.
source

Between September 10-12 The Second Polar Law Symposium 2009 Will be held at the University of Akureyri Iceland to present and debate current legal challenges in the polar regions. The Fyrst Polar Law symposium was held September 7-10 2008 and brought together several of the world's leading Polar lawyers and senior scientists and coincided with the launch of a new Masters program in Polar Law at the University of Akureyri.
source

Ice cores from Antarctica, Greenland and elsewhere in the world serve as a way for scientists to travel back in time to understand past climate. They analyze such things as the trapped bubbles of gas, chemicals, insoluble dust and trace metals found in the ice to reconstruct the cycles of glacial advance and retreat, the waxing and waning of temperature, the sudden appearance of droughts and volcanic eruptions.
source

The geopolitical interests of Arctic states are a hot topic as climate change and a growing demand for energy cause greater concern over disputed borders and overlapping sovereignty claims in the North. Russia plays a central role in the international politics of the North, being the largest Arctic state geographically and an important player in the regional and global energy marketplace.
source

Next summer the IPY (International Polar Year) scientists will converge on Norway for a conference where the eagerly-awaited results of the massive polar science research that has been conducted since 2007 will be shared.
source

SSF has organized a Pan-Svalbard Cooperation workshop in order to strengthen the scientific links between the main research stations. The workshop took place on board of Polish research vessel R/V Horyzont II, 17-21 Aug 2009. The participants visited Longyearbyen, Hornsund, Barentsburg and Ny-Alesund.
source

Nitrous oxide has now become the largest ozone-depleting substance emitted through human activities, and is expected to remain the largest throughout the 21st century, NOAA scientists say in a new study.
source

A new international research effort on the Greenland ice sheet with the University of Colorado at Boulder as the lead U.S. institution set a record for single-season deep ice-core drilling this summer, recovering more than a mile of ice core that is expected to help scientists better assess the risks of abrupt climate change in the future.
source

Carbon dioxide (CO2) causes enormous plankton bloom off the coast of northwest Russia.
Images taken over the Barents Sea by one of NASA’s satellites in late August show huge areas of milky-blue color water, reports Discovery News. This is due to phytoplankton.
source

Two scientific reports released this week are predicting another year of severe ice loss for the Arctic, though atmospheric patterns and cool temperatures in some regions -- including Hudson Bay -- are expected to prevent the world from witnessing the kind of record-smashing retreat seen in 2007.
source

Russia continues its arctic research program with drifting ice stations in the high latitudes. The icebreaker “Yamal” sails out to pick up scientists who have spent nearly a year on an ice floe and to find a suitable place for a new station.
source

New research conducted by scientists Douglas S. Wilson and Bruce Luyendyk of UC Santa Barbara point to a new location for Antarctic ice that was missing at a key point in climate history some 34 million years ago. The scientists used previous studies to design a model on the topography of the West Antarctic bedrock at a transition point in climate history 34 million years ago. Results of this study were published in Geophysical Research Letters.
source

Remains (mostly skin, hairs, and bones) of a now extinct elephant seal colony found along the Victoria Land Coast in the Ross Sea have provided scientists new insight into how fast species respond to climate changes. The results showed a that the species flourished quickly around 8,000 years ago due to the extension of their habitat, before a loss of diversity in the population took place 1,000 years ago, when the sea ice expanded. Scientists suspect this phenomenon was due to a change in climate.
source

The Arctic cod stocks have not been this big since 1948. The reason is climate change which brings warmer water into the Norwegian and Barents Seas.
source

NASA has several satellites that orbit the Earth one behind the other on the same track. They're called the "A-Train" and one of the things they study is tropical cyclones. There are also other satellites outside the A-Train that are used to study different aspects of tropical cyclones. The satellites that form the A-Train provide unique information about tropical cyclones, the collective term for tropical depressions, tropical storms, hurricanes and typhoons.
source

This year's AREX cruise noted an increase in water temperatures west of Svalbard. The researchers observe cycles with warmer and colder water with slightly positive trend.
source

NATO’s General Secretary, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, wants a stronger NATO- presence in the arctic, as changing climate makes the area more accessible.
source

The company Store Norske Gull is preparing to drill for gold on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard after successful geological surveys.
source

Geoengineering techniques aim to slow global warming through the use of human-made changes to the Earth's land, seas or atmosphere. But new research shows that the use of geoengineering to do environmental good may cause other environmental harm. In a symposium at the Ecological Society of America's Annual Meeting, ecologists discuss the viability of geoengineering, concluding that it is potentially dangerous at the global scale, where the risks outweigh the benefits.
source

Source: NSIDC The annual late-summer meltdown of the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska has commenced in earnest. While the satellite jockeys at the National Snow & Ice Data Center aren’t logging alarming visions of an all-time record slush cup, it’s getting close.
“Arctic sea ice extent for the month of July was the third lowest for that month in the satellite record, after 2007 and 2006,” the NSIDC ice wizards reported this week. “The average rate of melt in July 2009 was nearly identical to that of July 2007.”
source

In the recent years, the world’s attention has turned to the Arctic, not least because of its vast energy resources. Due to the climate change and its significant impact to the Arctic environment resources that have long been unreachable are becoming feasible for exploitation.It is estimated that up to fifth of the world’s undiscovered petroleum resources are to be found in the Arctic while the Arctic’s share of the worlds known resources today is around 12%.
source

An international expedition is due to set off from the north Russian port of Murmansk Wednesday to follow the North East Passage around the Russian coast to highlight global warming, a spokesperson said on Tuesday.
The North East Passage, now known as the Northern Sea Route, is a shipping lane running along Russia's Far Eastern and Siberian coasts that is usually only free of ice for around eight weeks a year, however, the affects of global warming are causing ice to retreat opening up previously closed maritime routes.
source

In July 2009 Senate Foreign Relations Committee convenor Senator John F Kerry of Massachusetts stated:
We are here today to discuss a grave and growing threat to global stability, human security, and America’s national security. As you will hear from all of today’s witnesses, the threat of catastrophic climate change is not an academic concern for the future.
It is already upon us, and its effects are being felt worldwide, right now. Earlier this year, a 25-mile wide ice bridge connecting the Wilkins Shelf to the Antarctic landmass shattered, disconnecting the Shelf from the Antarctic continent. In four years, the Arctic is projected to experience its first ice-free summer – not in 2030, but in 2013. The threat is real and fast approaching.
source

A chunk of ice the size of Manhattan Island is on the verge of breaking off the Petermann Glacier in Greenland –while researchers watch its every movement.
The chunk is the tip of the ice tongue of the largest glacier in the Arctic. The tongue is pushing the glacier’s ice through a fjord and out to sea.
source

July 15th was a day of excitement. Ewan, the Scott Base Field Support Co-ordinator, announced that a short walk was now open on the sea ice in front of the base. This route marks the opening portion of the 8km-long Cape Armitage Loop (named after Lieutenant Albert Armitage, Scott’s second-in-command on his 1901 - 04 Discovery Expedition).
source

Content:
1. Data reports
2. Project reports and National Committee Reports
3. Polar Weeks
4. Changes to IPY Website
5. Upcoming IPY meetings and AGU sessions
6. Update from Oslo 2010 Planning Process
7. ICSU Visioning process for Earth System Research
8. Call for new stories and blogs for ipy.org
pdf

source