The International Polar Year 2007/08: Opportunities and Challenges

By Hajo Eicken, Geophysical Institute

March 2007 rang in the start of the Fourth International Polar Year (IPY-4). IPY-4 will last through March of 2009 and constitutes a broad, intensive international effort of coordinated observations and exploration of the Earth’s polar regions. While the IPY-4 is formally organized through the International Council for Science and the World Meteorological Organization (for details on IPY see the International Coordination Office’s web site at www.ipy.org, or the U.S. Committee’s web site at www.us-ipy.org), it is very much a bottom-up affair that is largely driven by the interests and activities of individual researchers, educators, students and members of the public in over 60 nations.

Alaska, specifically, has a long and strong history of involvement with the IPY, ever since the U.S. Army Signal Corps’ Observation Hut was put in place near the present village of Barrow in 1882/83 for the first IPY. Out of the two hundred IPY-4 projects that have been formally endorsed at the international level, roughly a quarter have direct ties to Alaska or involvement by UA. The Geophysical Institute, in particular, played a pivotal role in the past IPY, which due to its broader geographic focus was referred to as the International Geophysical Year (IGY). It is instructive to contrast
the IGY, which involved tens of thousands of scientists across the globe, with IPY-4, in the context of satellite remote sensing and specifically the Alaska Satellite Facility’s (ASF) potential role.

The IGY initiated the space age and satellite era with the first successful rocket launch of the Soviet Union’s Sputnik into orbit on October 4, 1957; amateur radio enthusiasts were able to pick up the signal from Sputnik’s transmitter. Today, at ASF and UA alone, more than a dozen satellites transmit data to ground receiving stations and many of these data streams are available to anyone with a reasonably fast internet connection hours after acquisition. Geospatial data products derived from satellites are distributed through various data centers and have reached all the way from university research into K-12 science projects. IPY-4 may well mark the threshold between the largely passive registration of science as a complex, somewhat impenetrable, enterprise that figured prominently in the context of the Cold War during the IGY years, and a much more participatory era with an active, two-way dialog between scientists and the public.

An example of the vast potential of new technology coupled with a genuine interest of the public and local experts is offered by Figure 1, showing an amalgamation of different types of geospatial and historical information that relies on Google™ Earth as a relatively simple geospatial data portal visualization tool. It is likely that the trajectory from the IGY to IPY-4 and progress in Earth remote sensing was in significant part due to the motivation the IGY provided to bright and capable scientists and engineers to get involved in the study of the Earth using advanced methods. The hope is that IPY-4 will inspire future generations in similar ways. A big difference between the IGY and IPY-4 is that the research agenda has become broader and more interdisciplinary with the increasing recognition of how important, for example, human activities are for the Earth’s climate and vice versa.

Another important factor to consider, in particular for the satellite remote-sensing community, is the fact that the linkages and the degree of exchange between scientists, engineers, and various stakeholder groups, who are relying on scientific data and model output for short and long-term planning purposes is becoming ever more sophisticated. Arguably, it is at this interface that some of the most exciting and far-reaching IPY activities over the course of the next 2 years will take place. To be truly successful, a deeper and more substantive dialog is required between data providers, researchers, and key stakeholder groups on how to derive the maximum synergistic benefits out of existing programs, and the flurry of activities that are part of the IPY-4. In regards to the latter, the plans for a broad-based Arctic Observing System that builds on the suite of dramatic changes witnessed in the Arctic over the past two decades (see www.arcus.org/search for more details) carry both great promise and the responsibility to engage stakeholders and local communities at an early stage. Here, satellite remote sensing can play a major role to bring together different perspectives and integrate across a range of different scales.

Looking back to the IGY and previous Polar Years, one may well ask: So what’s so special about this IPY? While there are still plenty of unexplored problems and challenges that will be addressed through scientific discovery and innovation during the IPY, grand challenges and opportunities loom. Thus, the Arctic appears to be subject to a complex of change in the physical, chemical, and biological environment that is in many ways unprecedented in the recent past. At the same time, with the end of the Cold War, geopolitical change, and receding snow and ice, many of the circum-Arctic nations are reexamining their territorial claims and geopolitical stance in the North. At the local and regional level, indigenous populations have gained significant degrees of autonomy over the past decade or two. With industrial activities such as mining, and oil and gas development moving north, socio-economic impacts are substantial. Finally, owing to these changes (and aided in important ways by satellite remote sensing), the linkages between the Arctic and lower latitudes have become more apparent and explain why so many non-Arctic nations are planning significant research efforts in the North during IPY-4. Each one of these changes is important and significant in its own right. However, it is the combination and interaction between all of these that make research – and life – in the North so exciting.

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