International Polar Year - Finnish national web pages are opened

30.9.2005 8:00
The Finnish International Polar Year website has been opened at the address: www.ipy-finland.fi

The International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-2008 will be an intense, internationally coordinated campaign of research that will initiate a new era in polar science. IPY 2007-2008 will include research in both polar regions and recognise the strong links these regions have with the rest of the globe. It will involve a wide range of research disciplines, including the social sciences, but the emphasis will be interdisciplinary in its approach and truly international in participation. It aims to educate and involve the public, and to help train the next generation of engineers, scientists, and leaders.

The Polar Regions are remote areas of the Earth that have profound significance for the Earth’s climate and ultimately environments, ecosystems and human society. However we still remain remarkably ignorant of many aspects of how polar climate operates and its interaction with polar environments, ecosystems and societies. To have any hope of understanding the current global climate and what might happen in future the science community needs a better picture of conditions at the poles and how they interact with and influence the oceans, atmosphere and land masses. Existing climate models do not work well in the polar regions and have for example failed to predict the dramatic break-up of Antarctic ice shelves observed in recent years. The three fastest warming regions on the planet in the last two decades have been Alaska, Siberia and parts of the Antarctic Peninsula, Thus the Polar Regions are highly sensitive to climate change and this raises real concern for the future of polar ecosystems and Arctic society. [source: www.ipy.org]

Finnish IPY coordination

Finnish IPY activities have been planned with the endorsement of the Advisory Committee on Arctic Research in Finland. The Finnish National Board on Scientific Polar Research represents nationally the institutes participating in IPY, and in different international IPY organisations

National coordination / secretariat is hosted by the Thule Institute (University of Oulu) and the Arctic Centre (University of Lapland).

More information from the web pages: www.ipy-finland.fi and http://www.arcticcentre.org/InEnglish/RESEARCH/Projects/International_Polar_Year.iw3