PARIS: Nearly 50,000 scientists from 60 countries across the world have enrolled themselves in a two-year intense study of the poles under the International Polar Year program, which was launched on Thursday. The scientists will focus on climate change and investigate how global warming is impacting the poles and what consequences this holds for humanity.
The research project will mostly concentrate on the impact of climate change on the poles. It is believed that the poles had been the most affected areas of the climate change.
Scientists will focus on polar bears, seals, caribou and the Greenland shark while they also undertake to probe into freshwater systems, plant communities, peat lands and seabirds. They will study the problems faced by Inuit societies, which have been greatly affected by global warming as several of their conventional practices have ceased to exist. The study will be a focus on the poles as never before, say the scientists.
Climate scientists are concerned about the degradations that are happening on the poles as a result of the increasing temperatures as ice sheets are dislodging and melting, posing threats to the existence of several communities and infrastructures like oil, gas and pipelines.
Scientists' teams are also expected to probe into the mystery of the ancient remains of an aboriginal discovered by hikers in 1999 in a receding glacier in Tatshenshini-Alsek Park in northern British Columbia. The studies are expected to yield a better insight into the living conditions of the aboriginals of the region, animals that were present and the travel and living patterns of these people.
In the last International Polar Year program that took place 50 years ago, scientists had studied the Aurora Borealis and the jet stream and they also measured ozone for the first time. And the year also saw one of the greatest events that helped in tracking the happenings on the poles taking place -- the launch of the first satellite, the Sputnik 1, by the then Union of Soviet Socialist Republic.
A prime concern for the researchers is the damage caused to the world's glaciers, not merely in polar regions but in higher altitudes near the equator. Several scientists believe glaciers in the tropics are retreating. They say, for example, in the Himalayas, 22 per cent of the ice disappeared in the last four years. A glacier in the Peruvian Andes is expected to vanish in the next five years, while Tanzania's Kilimanjaro peak will lose its remaining ice by 2015.
The 2007 International Polar Year is being sponsored by the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization and the International Council for Science. Nearly $1.5 billion in funds have been allocated for the work by various exploration agencies. The program will end in 2009.
