Thursday marked the official start of International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-2008, a worldwide program that will be the most intensive period of research on the polar regions in half a century.
More than 50,000 scientists from 63 countries will be conducting and sharing research during the two-year program, assessing the Arctic and Antarctic and making forecasts and recommendations for the future.
Canada will be spending $150 million to fund 44 research projects with the IPY-- the most of any participating country. All the projects are aligned with one of two priority areas:
- climate change impacts
- and adaptation and the health and well-being of Northern communities.
"Changes in the Arctic due to climate change are a signal, an early warning to Canadians," Environment Minister John Baird said in announcing the funding.
"These projects will give us a better understanding of the effects of climate change and other pollution falling on the North and that will lead to further actions we need to protect our water, land and citizens."
The largest of Canada's projects is being led by Dr. David Barber from the University of Manitoba, who is conducting a study called the Circumpolar Flaw Lead (CFL) System Study.
The project includes 200 scientists from around the world studying the "flaw lead" system, a circumpolar phenomenon created when the central Arctic ice pack moves away from coastal ice, leaving areas of open water.
The IPY takes place every 50 years. The first, in 1882-83, saw researchers from 11 countries establishing research stations around the Arctic and provided the foundation for much of the polar science knowledge we have today. During the last IPY in 1957-58, climate change and its effects on the poles were just emerging as a scientific issue.
Fifty years later, the devastating effects of global warming are becoming even clearer. What's more, scientists are armed with much better technology, especially satellites to study polar regions, known as the cryosphere.
"Often we study parts or pieces of the system, but IPY provides an opportunity to put the picture together as a whole," David Hik, Executive Director of the Canadian International Polar Year secretariat, told Canada AM Thursday.
"This year, all disciplines will be included. So they'll be looking at the climate, they'll be looking at permafrost, wildlife and polar bears and treeline changes. And most importantly, what we're calling the human dimension of change in the polar regions."
Arctic population health projects led by specialists at Laval University in Quebec will receive a lion's share of the federal funds.
"It will benefit the people of the North, the residents who are being affected by rapid change," Hik says.
Canadian researchers will also be participating in studies of polar bears, the disappearing permafrost and Arctic glaciers and the ecosystem in Yukon's Kluane National Park.
Hik said what also distinguishes this IPY from previous is that 'the world is paying attention to the polar regions now."
"We know that the changes occurring there affect the rest of the planet," Hik said.
"And there's a great deal of interest in both the Arctic and the Antarctic as the sort of 'switch' that could have the greatest effect on the planet."
The world's top climate scientists said in a United Nations report last month that "average Arctic temperatures increased at almost twice the global average rate in the past 100 years."
They projected that sea levels could rise by 18 to 59 cm by 2100, by when Arctic sea ice may disappear in summers.
International researchers plan to try to quantify the amount of fresh water leaking out from underneath ice sheets in Antarctica, which takes place beneath the ice and has been difficult to measure.
Other projects include:
- the installation of an Arctic Ocean monitoring system, described as an early warning system for climate change;
- a census of the deep-sea creatures that populate the bottom of Antarctica's Southern Ocean.
- the mapping of the Antarctic's lakes and mountains -- some trapped under about ice for more than 35 million years; and,
- astronomers will investigate plasma and magnetic fields kicked up by the sun using telescopes, balloons and spacecraft.
The polar year is being sponsored by the UN's World Meteorological Organization and the International Council for Science. About $1.5 billion has been earmarked for the year's projects by various national exploration agencies.
