The Scientific Achievement of the Decade

The 2007-8 International Polar Year has come to an end. If you haven't heard of it, you should have, and a new publication called "The State of Polar Research" is a good place to start:

IPY has emerged as the largest internationally coordinated planetary research effort in the past 50 years. It has engaged the intellectual resources of thousands of scientists - many more than expected and often from non-polar countries - representing an unprecedented breadth of specialties, from geophysical to biological to social sciences. IPY has been a truly international, interdisciplinary endeavour with over 160 endorsed science projects assembled from the ideas of researchers in more than 60 countries.

The obvious areas were of course covered in depth: we now much more than we did before about what's happening to the polar ice caps; warming in Antarctica turns out to be a much bigger problem than people had feared before the IPY research took place, and the freshening of the Antarctic ocean, as ice melts into it, might well affect ocean circulation worldwide. This too is scary:

IPY research has also identified large pools of carbon stored as methane in permafrost. Thawing permafrost threatens to destabilize the stored methane -- a greenhouse gas -- and send it into the atmosphere... IPY researchers along the Siberian coast observed substantial emissions of methane from ocean sediments.

One of the great things about IPY, though, was that it didn't just look at climate change: it really covered everything, including over 30 projects (and each of these projects is a huge, multi-national, interdisciplinary undertaking) devoted to social and human science. All of this will leave a lasting legacy:

The planners of IPY 2007-2008 intended that it would pave the way for a new era of scientific progress in knowledge and understanding of the polar regions, and leave a vital legacy of sustained observing systems, increased international research coordination and collaboration, stronger links between researchers across different disciplinary fields, reference datasets for comparison with the future and the past, the development of a new generation of enthused polar researchers, and full engagement and understanding of the public and decision-makers worldwide in the purpose and value of polar research.
In addition, IPY 2007-2008 has advanced the participation of Arctic residents, including indigenous peoples, in polar science at all levels. These developments will enable future research to make maximum use of indigenous knowledge and for indigenous communities to benefit from scientific advances.

Altogether, IPY cost about $1.2 billion, of which about $400 million was additional to what would have been spent anyway. That is either an enormous sum or a very small one, depending on how you look at it and how its findings and results are going to be used. If we're entering a new era of public works, then IPY is a great model for how they can and should be done.

My sister Rhian was involved in IPY from very near the beginning, and she and her colleagues at the IPY International Programme Office have done an amazing job. That office is going to be winding down now, but the science isn't going to stop, and in fact IPY has created a fantastic infrastructure of research equipment and scientists who are concentrated on the polar regions like never before. Many congratulations to all of them, and may they keep up the good work!