Polar News and Notes International Polar Year

In June 2008, Miami, Florida, artist Xavier Cortada traveled to the North Pole with sound artist Juan Carlos Espinosa to create paintings using Arctic water and install eco-art at 90 degrees North.
Cortada made a similar art trek to the South Pole in January 2007 as a recipient of an Antarctic Artists and Writers Program residency […]

Have you ever felt confused by the complexity of the polar regions? Or realized that your knowledge just scratches the surface of these far-off places? If you have, you are certainly in good company. All of us - especially the project staff at Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears - have been confronted with our lack of understanding […]

This July, a team of four scientists, a writer and a photographer from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the University of Washington will return to Greenland for their third year of investigating glacial lakes, which form atop the ice sheet each spring and summer. The expedition runs from July 7 to 24.
From their tents […]

News from the polar regions in June includes speculation on the future of the Arctic sea ice and permafrost, unexpected behavior of an Antarctic ice stream, and new technology designed to assist in polar research. Missed these stories the first time? Read on!

What’s happening under and inside the masses of ice in the polar regions is of great interest to scientists. Recently researchers in West Antarctica have found that one ice stream–a region of the ice sheet that moves faster than the surrounding ice—jerks along in an earthquake-like pattern equivalent to a magnitude 7 quake.
Their findings ran […]