International Polar Day - Changing Earth

A wide range of educational and community activities including classroom experiments, a virtual ballon launch and live-web-conferencing  with the scientists in both the Arctic and the Antarctic, was just some of the activities that took place on the third 'International Polar Day March 12. 

This time the focus was on change over geological time, especially the glacial and interglacial periods that have occurred during the past million years, and cycles of ocean- atmosphere interactions that give rise to regional climate variations on scales of decades to centuries.

Important to understand 
Foto: Antarctic Photo Library
Iskjerneboring i AntarktisThe combination of continents and ocean gateways in their present configuration, large ice masses in Antarctica, and perennial ice coverage of the Arctic Ocean, led to oscillations in the climate system.  These oscillations, known popularly as ice ages, involve cool glacial periods interspersed with warm interglacial periods - they have occurred for nearly 2 million years.  

There are also subtle natural, regional, patterns of variability in the ocean and atmosphere that affect weather patterns over most of the globe, on annual, decadal, and perhaps centennial time scales. In addition to ice ages and regional variations, human activities will impose a doubling of atmospheric greenhouse gases that will result in temperature increases on time scales of decades to centuries.

"As caretakers and beneficiaries of ecosystems and civilizations adapted to specific climate conditions, we need to give serious effort to understanding and predicting natural and human-induced change", reads the IPY-pressrelease.

Talk to an expert
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. 

This 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. 

These are the thirteen projects

Launch a virtual ballooon
To show that you're taking part in an activity on this International Polar Day, you can launch a virtual balloon. You can visit the map showing everyone's balloons on this website, or you can embed the map on your own website.

Balloons are already sent from Japan, Hawaii, Russia, Spain, Svalbard and the US. 

See the map and send your own balloon

During The International Polar Year a regular sequence of International Polar Days will raise awareness and provide information about particular and timely aspects of the polar regions.

For more information on the International Polar Day or other upcoming events, check out the International Polar Year Website: http://www.ipy.org/