March 18 will be the eighth quarterly Polar Day sponsored by the International Polar Year (IPY) organization to enable schools and other groups worldwide to join in celebration of polar research. The March theme is Polar Oceans.

Ocean-related activities will continue throughout the week of March 17-26. Resources provided by IPY include virtual balloon launches, activities for teachers, multilingual educational flyers, press releases, IPY science projects, contact to IPY scientists, and live web and video connections to the polar regions. Web links to these resources and updates on scheduled events will be available at http://www.ipy.org/index.php?/ipy/detail/polaroceans .

Resources from the seven previous Polar Days can be found at http://www.ipy.org/index.php?/ipy/detail/international_polar_days/. Each event focused on a specific aspect of polar science. Topics have included sea ice, ice sheets, biodiversity in the polar regions, climate, and more.