International Polar Year
The First International Polar Year was proposed by an Austro-Hungarian naval officer, Karl Weyprecht, in 1875 and organized by Georg Neumayer, director of the German Maritime Observatory.
Rather than settling for traditional individual and national efforts, they pushed for a coordinated scientific approach to researching Arctic phenomena.
Observations focused on meteorology, geomagnetism, auroral phenomena, ocean currents, tides, structure, and the motion of ice and atmospheric electricity.
The availability of airplanes, motorized sea and land transport and new instruments like radiosondes enabled these phenomena to be investigated.
It was also proposed to explicitly include in the plan for the second IPY the goal to investigate how observations in the polar regions could improve the accuracy of weather forecasts and the safety of air and sea transport.
It comprises 38 chapters in five parts (Planning, Research, Observations, Outreach, and Legacies) and brings together hundreds of contributing authors from a wide range disciplines and more than 30 countries.
This broad overview demonstrates the extensive and essential contribution made by participating nations and organizations, and provides a prospective blueprint for future polar research.
A joint conference organized by SCAR and IASC under the overarching theme “Polar Research – Arctic and Antarctic perspectives in the International Polar Year” was held 8–11 July 2008 in St. Petersburg, Russia, and brought together Arctic and Antarctic researchers as part of the fourth IPY.
The aim of the IPY Science Conference in 2012 was to help shape stewardship, sustainable development and environmental protection goals for the strategic and highly valued polar regions.
[13] The IPY International Youth Steering Committee (IYSC) had been established in 2004 by Amber Church, Tyler Kuhn, Melanie Raymond and Hugues Lantuit to represent the needs of the youth during the fourth IPY, and the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists (APECS) had been established in 2006 to represent the needs and challenges faced by (post-)graduate students, post-docs, junior faculty, and research associates involved in polar research.
Jenny Baeseman, as the Founding Director of APECS, established the organisations first international secretariat in Tromsø, Norway during the IPY.
The IPYPD has been created by the Arctic Science and Technology Information System (ASTIS), the Cold Regions Bibliography Project (CRBP), the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) Library, the Discovery and Access of Historic Literature of the IPYs (DAHLI) project and NISC Export Services (NES).
