A New Phase of Exploration and Understanding: Planning for The International Polar Year - 2007/2008

Planning is underway to hold an International Polar Year in 2007-2008. IPY 2007-2008 stands to be a significant research opportunity to further our understanding of polar regions and polar processes. The International Polar Year has the potential to capture the public's imagination and convey the crucial role that the polar regions play in global systems. IPY 2007-2008 is envisioned to be an intense, international campaign of coordinated polar observations and analysis, which will be bipolar in focus, multidisciplinary in scope, and truly international in participation. The vision is for many nations to work together to gain holistic insights into planetary processes, targeted at exploring and increasing our understanding of the poles and their roles in the global system. The concept of an International Polar Year 2007 - 2008 has been endorsed and advanced by a broad range of global and polar research groups. Earlier this year, the International Council for Science (ICSU) formed an International Polar Year Planning Group (IPY-PG) which met for the first time at the end of July. The Planning Group discussed ways to create an open process that encourages broad input from the international community. The Planning Group began to describe the desired goals of IPY 2007-2008, which should address compelling science issues through multi-national programs, enable scientific programs which would not otherwise occur, attract and develop the next generation of polar scientists, and engage the public. The Planning Group has identified three overarching themes that we hope can serve as the foundation for IPY 2007-2008: Exploring the Earth's Icy Domains, Decoding the Role of the Poles in Global Change Understanding Polar Processes. The Planning Group envisions focused research activities under each of these major themes. For example, a program to explore the sub-ice environment of East Antarctica would fit under the theme Exploring the Earth's Icy Domains, a program of Integrated Polar Observing Networks including environmental instrumentation would fit under Decoding the Role of the Poles in Global Change, and a collaborative effort to study the stability of the cryosphere would fit under Understanding Polar Processes.