5.1 Early science outcomes of IPY 2007-2008

• Main Authors: Bell, R, Allison, I, Alverson, K, Danell, K, Fahrbach, E, Krupnik, I, Lopez-Martinez, J, Sarukhanian, E, Summerhayes, C
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: CCI Press in collaboration with the University of the Arctic and ICSU/WMO Joint Committee for International Polar Year 2007-2008 2011
• Subjects: Earth Sciences; Physical Geography and Environmental Geoscience; Physical Geography and Environmental Geoscience not elsewhere classified; Arctic; IPY
• Online Access: http://www.icsu.org/publications/reports-and-reviews/ipy-summary; http://ecite.utas.edu.au/76090

Introduction: Reflecting on IPY PlanningThemesDuring the planning phase of IPY 20072008, a numberof major themes emerged from the communitybasedconsultation planning. In 2004, the ICSU PlanningGroup identified six major research themes outlined inthe Framework document (Rapley et al., 2004; Chapter1.3). These major IPY research themes were:(1) To determine the present environmental status ofthe polar regions by quantifying their spatial andtemporal variability.(2) To quantify and understand past and presentenvironmental and human change in the polarregions in order to improve predictions.(3) To advance our understanding of polar-globalteleconnections on all scales and of the processescontrolling these interactions.(4) To investigate the unknowns at the frontiers ofscience in the polar regions.(5) To use the unique vantage point of the polarregions to develop and enhance observatoriesstudying the Earths inner core, the Earthsmagnetic field, geospace, the Sun and beyond.(6) To investigate the cultural, historical and socialprocesses, which shape the resilience andsustainability of circumpolar human societies, andto identify their unique contributions to globalcultural diversity and citizenship.This summary reviews the early ideas and findingsfrom each of the themes. Our objective is to take stockof what the IPY scientific community has learned todate, that is, by the official closing of IPY 20072008at the IPY Open Science Conference in Oslo in June2010 (Chapter 5.6). The previous chapters outlinedwhat happened during IPY. Here, we will focus on thegeneral achievements of the IPY science program. Thissummary is deliberately written to avoid referring toindividual IPY projects, program names or specificactivities that have been amply covered in othersections of this volume (Part 2; Part 3; Chapters 5.2, 5.3,and 5.4). As is known from previous IPY/IGY efforts(Chapter 1.1), the major insights will take a substantialtime to emerge. Given the initial stage of analysis andinterpretation of much of the IPY data, this summaryis neither comprehensive nor complete. Also, it uses alimited number of references, since the main literaturebased on the IPY results has not emerged yet. Manypreliminary results (at the time of this writing) wereonly available from the abstracts of papers presentedat the Oslo IPY Science Conference in June 2010 (e.g.,Bell et al., 2010a; Ferracioli et al., 2010; Wiens et al.,2010).1 Nonetheless, this chapter should be viewed asa first glimpse of the advances in our inter-disciplinary(and often, cross-disciplinary) understanding ofthe processes and linkages in the polar regions. Fordecades, the data collected during IPY 20072008 willsupport new scientific insights and advances.