International Polar Year starts with sense of urgency

PARIS: Climate change topped the agenda as International Polar Year was launched in Paris on Thursday, bringing together thousands of scientists from more than 60 countries including India.

The $1.5 billion effort to study both the north and south poles will comprise 220 research and outreach projects over the next two years.

If the last International Polar Year (IPY) 50 years ago launched a heady era of exploration and pioneering research, the one that got underway on Thursday was informed by a deep concern for the future.

Things have altered radically since New Zealand's Sir Edmund Hillary thrilled the world in 1958 by charging to the South Pole in three Massey Ferguson tractors, and mainly for the worse.

"IPY comes at a crossroads for the planet's future," warned Michel Jarraud, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organisation, co-sponsor of the Polar Year along with the International Council for Science.

"These regions are highly vulnerable to rising temperatures," he said, alluding to the culprit that had set in motion a chain of potentially devastating change: global warming.

Seen not long ago as forbidding icescapes waiting to be conquered and tamed, today the northern and southern polar regions are viewed instead as fragile repositories of native cultures, wildlife and deep cold, their fate inextricably bound with ours.

Climate change is the driving force that has defined four areas of urgent research for the new IPY, the fourth since 1882.