5.1 Early science outcomes of IPY 2007-2008

Introduction: Reflecting on IPY Planning Themes During the planning phase of IPY 2007–2008, a number of major themes emerged from the communitybased consultation planning. In 2004, the ICSU Planning Group identified six major research themes outlined in the “Framework” document (Rapley et al., 2004; Chapter 1.3). These major IPY research themes were: (1) To determine the present environmental status of the polar regions by quantifying their spatial and temporal variability. (2) To quantify and understand past and present environmental and human change in the polar regions in order to improve predictions. (3) To advance our understanding of polar-global teleconnections on all scales and of the processes controlling these interactions. (4) To investigate the unknowns at the frontiers of science in the polar regions. (5) To use the unique vantage point of the polar regions to develop and enhance observatories studying the Earth’s inner core, the Earth’s magnetic field, geospace, the Sun and beyond. (6) To investigate the cultural, historical and social processes, which shape the resilience and sustainability of circumpolar human societies, and to identify their unique contributions to global cultural diversity and citizenship. This summary reviews the early ideas and findings from each of the themes. Our objective is to take stock of what the IPY scientific community has learned to date, that is, by the official closing of IPY 2007–2008 at the IPY Open Science Conference in Oslo in June 2010 (Chapter 5.6). The previous chapters outlined what happened during IPY. Here, we will focus on the general achievements of the IPY science program. This summary is deliberately written to avoid referring to individual IPY projects, program names or specific activities that have been amply covered in other sections 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 substantial time to emerge. Given the initial stage of analysis and interpretation of much of the IPY data, this summary is neither comprehensive nor complete. Also, it uses a limited number of references, since the main literature based on the IPY results has not emerged yet. Many preliminary results (at the time of this writing) were only available from the abstracts of papers presented at 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 as a first glimpse of the advances in our inter-disciplinary (and often, cross-disciplinary) understanding of the processes and linkages in the polar regions. For decades, the data collected during IPY 2007–2008 will support new scientific insights and advances.