International Polar Year 2007–2008 - WMO

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IPY 20 07–20 08
warming over the Antarctic Peninsula and the cooling
over the high plateau noted by Thompson and Solomon
(2002). The changes in the winds have also been
linked to regional changes in precipitation, increases
in sea ice around Antarctica, warming of the Southern
Ocean and a local decrease in the ocean sink of CO 2 .
Efforts to study polar air pollution during IPY have
yielded two preliminary conclusions. Firstly, the
increased level of pollution in the Arctic atmosphere
in recent years has an anthropogenic origin and has
been generated by both agricultural activities and
forest fires in Russia and Kazakhstan. In contrast, there
is clear evidence that the atmosphere in the Antarctic
remains uncontaminated by any anthropogenic
aerosol through IPY 2007–2008.
In the social/human field, the ‘change’ theme
was addressed by many projects, including those
that investigated the growing impact of oil and gas
development on polar people, their local economies
and subsistence activities. Special efforts were made
to document the impact of both environmental and
social processes on community integration and wellbeing,
as well as the new emerging threats to the
continuity of indigenous economies, languages and
knowledge systems. Several IPY projects in history
and archaeology explored past changes in the polar
regions, including former government relocation
policies, and the impacts of early forms of commercial
exploitation of polar resources, such as whaling,
seal-hunting and mining. Arctic social change was
documented via longitudinal comparative studies
of migrations and the creation of long-term datasets
on regional development, population movement,
education and community dynamics (Chapter 2.10).
Theme 3: Polar Linkages to Global
Processes
The third theme focused on how the polar regions
are linked to global processes. It sought to advance the
basic understanding of polar-global teleconnections
on all scales and of the processes controlling these
interactions. This theme aimed to address questions
such as: the role the polar regions play in the global
carbon cycle and the interactions between the
polar regions and lower latitudes, including linkages
through climatic, social, ecological and hydrological
processes.
IPY efforts have clearly documented some of the
key connections between the poles and the global
processes. Changes in Arctic Ocean conditions are
transmitted through subarctic seas on either side of
Greenland, modulating the Atlantic thermohaline
conveyor (Chapter 2.2). Evidence of fast propagation
of anomalous atmospheric conditions to the mid
latitudes demonstrated unprecedented large-scale
interactions leading to a warm Arctic and colder
conditions in mid latitudes. Continuing loss from the
West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets represents a
key threat of abrupt increase in the global sea level.
Global paleo-environmental conditions and their
changes can only be understood from information
about paleogeography and processes that occurred
around the poles. The evolution of submarine basins
and ridges affected the oceanic bottom currents and
produced deviations of the main current branches
along the Earth history. During IPY, campaigns in
different polar straits improved our understanding of
the role of plate tectonics in establishing the main polar
corridors for oceanic circulation. This information is
also relevant to understanding past glaciation phases
at both poles as well as changes in global climate. A
new tectonic map of Antarctica is being compiled as a
result of IPY research.
In the past, Arctic ecosystems have generally acted
as a negative feedback to climate warming, sequestering
the greenhouse gas CO 2 , storing large quantities of
organic carbon in cold soils and reflecting solar thermal
radiation away from the snow-covered Arctic land
surface. The decrease in the sea ice as well as the decrease
in snow and land ice coverage lowers the albedo
and introducing a key positive feedback capable of
accelerating Arctic water and air temperature increases.
The IPY research has contributed to better understanding
in soils suffering permafrost degradation of
both the microbiological processes and greenhouse
gas liberation to the atmosphere. The advances in
this field and the improvement of the boreholes network
will permit monitoring future changes of these
processes that can have global consequences. In both
polar regions, biological systems were found to be
more closely linked to each other than expected. This
is supported by the identification of more than 1000
previously unknown marine animal species of which