What is IPY?
International Polar Years (IPYs) are internationally coordinated periods
of intensive, interdisciplinary scientific research focused on the Earth’s Polar Regions.
IPY 2007-08 was the fourth International Polar Year (the others having taken place in
1882-83, 1932-33, 1957-58 - see history)
and actually ran from March 2007 to March 2009 in order to cover two complete summer field seasons at each of the poles.
A summary report of international IPY activities during 2007 and 2008,
issued by The International Council for Science / World Meteorological
Organization Joint Committee for the International Polar Year
2007–2008, is available here:
"The State of Polar Research"
What was the role of CIS in IPY 2007-08?
The Canadian Ice Service (CIS) was primarily involved in: 1) providing
logistical assistance to Canadian Coast Guard and marine research
vessels in the field, as well as to other shore-based scientists; and
2) taking a lead role in the archiving and dissemination of sea ice
data and satellite images for scientific research.
CIS IPY Products
1. (Bi)Weekly Radarsat Image Mosaics
These image mosaics compliment the regular (bi)weekly regional sea ice charts produced for 3 Canadian Arctic areas.
The latest mosaics are available in quickview format below.
Mosaics spanning the entire IPY period are publically available in gif/pdf format.
They are also available in high-resolution Geotiff format to IPY researchers (contact us for details).
2. Radarsat, Quikscat and other Animations
- Radarsat Ice Animation: (monthly frames, March 2006 - February 2007)
- Petermann Ice Island Animation
This
animation tracks a 20 km2 ice island (red circle) and a minor ice
island (blue circle) which both calved from the Petermann glacier on
the west coast of Greenland.
3. Arctic Weather Products
Arctic wind forecast visualizations and Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) images (both courtesy of Environment Canada's Prairie and Northern Region) are available for download (copy the files to your own machine in order to view/play them).
CLICK HERE TO ACCESS ARCTIC WIND FORECASTS AND AVHRR IMAGERY
Historical AVHRR images and model winds can be obtained by contacting Ed Hudson of the Prairie and Arctic Storm Prediction Centre.
4. IPY Ice Logistics Portal
This web site represents an international
collaborative effort and hosts ice charts contributed by all the Sea
Ice Services in the world, for both the Arctic and the Antarctic.
Click here to access.
5. IPY-themed Annual Arctic Atlases
The CIS Annual Arctic Atlases document the
freeze-up and winter ice conditions in the Canadian Arctic. They
include text summaries of the autumn freeze-up, and ice charts and SAR
image mosaics for the peak of the winter period for 3 main regions (the
Western Arctic, the Eastern Arctic and Hudson Bay). For IPY, these
Atlases were expanded to include more detailed summaries and mosaics
for 10 additional sub-regions important to IPY research projects.
6. Arctic Seasonal Summaries for the 2 IPY summers
CIS Arctic Seasonal Summaries provide a summary of prevailing ice and weather conditions during the summer melt-season.
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For additional historical sea ice data,
CIS Archives
maintains a large database of freely-available sea ice information.
This includes on-line charts back to 1968 and an on-line Ice Graph tool
for creating and downloading ice-coverage time series for various areas
of the Canadian Arctic. For other requests, please email us.
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