26 February 2007

International Polar Year Poster

NSIDC helped produce this poster in celebration of IPY. Get a copy

The International Polar Year (IPY) is a time dedicated to focused interdisciplinary study of Earth's polar regions. IPY extends from March 2007 through March 2009 so that researchers may study each polar region in winter and in summer. IPY gives the entire world a chance to learn more about the cold regions of our planet. Scientists from many disciplines will turn their attention to the Arctic, Antarctica, and all the cold places in between. 

The thousands of research projects that scientists undertake during IPY will generate large amounts of data and information. This information must be saved and managed so that researchers can study it for many years to come. Helping scientists find and use data is the mission of the National Snow and Ice Data center (NSIDC) and the Alaska Satellite Facility, also known as the "Polar Distributed Active Archive Centers," which joined together to produce the IPY Poster.

See IPY at NSIDC to learn more about NSIDC's involvement in IPY. Visit the Alaska Satellite Facility to learn more about their contributions. For more information about IPY, visit the official IPY Web site and the U.S. IPY Portal site.

Image description

The image at the top shows the South Pole; the image at the bottom of the poster shows the North Pole. Both images reveal the polar regions on September 21, 2005, the date of the second-lowest sea ice seen in the satellite era for Arctic sea ice. The new record-low was set in September 2007, set after the poster was designed. For more on the 2007 Arctic sea ice melt season, see Arctic Sea Ice News Fall 2007.

Placing images of the polar regions close to each other, in a way we do not normally see them, highlights some of the differences between the poles:

• The seasons in the two hemispheres are opposite from each other:  the end of the summer melt season in the Arctic is the end of the winter in Antarctica. While Arctic sea ice is melting away, Antarctic sea ice is growing, and vice versa.
• The North Pole’s "ice cap" is floating sea ice; the South Pole’s "ice cap" is a thick sheet of ice on top of the huge landmass of Antarctica.
• Compared to the Arctic, the Antarctic is an enormous region. 
• Landmasses—Greenland, North America, Siberia—surround the Arctic, while Antarctica sits apart, in isolation.

The images also show some of the similarities between the polar regions:

• Both the Arctic and Antarctic are cold places at the extreme "ends" of the Earth.
• Snow and ice heavily influence both regions.
• Both the Arctic and Antarctic will be important regions for research during the International Polar Year.

For a comparison of sea ice and other aspects of the two polar regions, see All About Sea Ice: Characteristics: Arctic vs. Antarctic.

Image generation

At our request, the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio derived these images from satellite data, much of which we archive at the Polar Distributed Active Archive Centers.

• Extent of the sea ice: determined from sea ice concentration from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer-Earth Observing System (AMSR-E) instrument aboard the NASA Terra/Aqua satellites; see Aqua/AMSR-E Data at NSIDC
• Color of the sea ice: derived from brightness temperature data from AMSR-E; see Aqua/AMSR-E Data at NSIDC
• Continents: obtained from the Blue Marble Next Generation seasonal land cover data set
• Global cloud cover: obtained from the 2002 Blue Marble cloud data.

Visit the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio online. View more images of the Earth's frozen places in the NASA animation, Tour of the Cryosphere.

About the quote

American poet Robert Frost wrote "The Star-Splitter" in 1923. The poem describes a farmer who burns his home down, using the insurance money to buy a telescope so that he can explore the mysteries of the night sky. We received permission from the copyright owner, Henry Holt and Company, to use the excerpt.

To get a copy of the poster

The National Snow and Ice Data Center is offering a limited number of free printed posters. Please contact NSIDC User Services or e-mail us at nsidc@nsidc.org to order your poster.

We also provide links to the high-resolution poster, below, so that you can download and print the poster on your equipment. You will need a large-format printer, such as a plotter, to print the full-size poster, which is 23.5 x 36.75 inches (59.7 x 93.3 centimeters) before trimming. Once the poster has printed, you will need to manually trim a 1/8- inch (0.3-centimeter) border to create the finished poster.

High-resolution TIFF (249.3 MB) (recommended for best quality)
High-resolution PDF (72.3 MB)