IPY 2007–2008: what the fourth polar year achieved

Updated November 2026

The International Polar Year 2007–2008 was the largest coordinated research program ever carried out in the Arctic and Antarctic. It ran from 1 March 2007 to 1 March 2009 and left behind new findings on ice and climate, a large but scattered body of open data, and a new generation of polar scientists and educators.

The fourth IPY in numbers

228international projects endorsed
~50,000researchers, observers, educators, students and support staff
60+countries taking part
~US$1.2 billioninternational funding

The 228 projects broke down as 170 science projects, 1 data management project and 57 education and outreach projects. Many national activities ran alongside them. The headline figure of 50,000 people is broader than "scientists": it counts local observers, teachers, students and the support staff who kept ships and stations running.

A quick way to see the scale: 57 of 228 projects is exactly one in four (57 ÷ 228 = 0.25). Education and outreach were treated as part of the program, not an add-on.

How it was organized

The IPY was co-sponsored by the International Council for Science (ICSU, now part of the International Science Council) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). An ICSU/WMO Joint Committee for the IPY oversaw the program, and an International Programme Office supported the work until it closed in 2010.

The program was named "2007–2008", but its observing period lasted two full years. That meant each polar region was studied through two complete summers and two winters, which matters for anything seasonal, from sea ice to bird migration. It also marked two anniversaries: 125 years since the first IPY and 50 years since the International Geophysical Year (see History of the IPYs).

The State of Polar Research report

On 25 February 2009, just before the observing period ended, WMO and ICSU released The State of Polar Research, a short statement of early findings. At that point more than 160 research projects had been carried out. Among the findings reported:

The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets were losing mass, and ice loss from Greenland appeared to be speeding up.
Warming in Antarctica was much more widespread than previously thought.
Bottom water near Antarctica was getting fresher, which fits with more ice melt and could affect ocean circulation.
Permafrost holds large amounts of methane; if it thaws, it could become a major source of greenhouse gases.
Research also improved understanding of how pollutants travel, how species evolve and how storms form.

The report said the IPY should leave better observing systems, stronger links between disciplines and communities, and a new generation of polar researchers. A large IPY science conference followed in Oslo in June 2010, and a fuller summary, Understanding Earth's Polar Challenges: International Polar Year 2007–2008, was published in 2011.

For the science behind these findings, see Polar ice and Polar amplification.

A data legacy, with gaps

The IPY adopted a strong open-data rule. Its data policy required that "IPY data, including operational data delivered in real time, are made available fully, freely, openly, and on the shortest feasible timescale."

In practice, the data ended up spread across many national and subject data centers. A planned IPY data and information service did not get long-term funding, and no central IPY archive or portal was created. To rescue part of the record, the PANGAEA data library, the ICSU World Data System and the International Council for Scientific and Technical Information extracted data tables from published IPY papers. Starting in 2013, they checked 1,380 IPY-related articles, found 450 with usable data, and published 1,270 data sets from them as open data.

The guide Polar data explains where to look for IPY data today.

A legacy in people

Several lasting programs for students, early-career scientists and teachers came out of the IPY:

APECS: The Association of Polar Early Career Scientists was founded during the IPY and is widely described as one of its main legacies. Membership is free. APECS runs the twice-yearly Polar Weeks in March and September and Antarctica Day activities each 1 December.
PolarTREC: Teachers and Researchers Exploring and Collaborating began as an IPY project funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation. It placed K-12 teachers on polar research teams, and it continued after the IPY under the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States (ARCUS).
Outreach records: An ICSU-funded assessment collected survey responses from more than 200 IPY education and outreach activities and information on more than 500 programs. The results are kept as the searchable Polar Outreach Catalogue on the APECS website. In 2010, a resource book, Polar Science and Global Climate, gathered teaching activities on six themes: atmosphere, ice, ocean, land, people and space.

Teachers can find these and other materials on Teaching resources.

A legacy in observing systems

WMO lists several of its own programs as legacies of the IPY: the Global Cryosphere Watch, closer engagement on observing the polar regions from space, and the Arctic and Antarctic Regional Climate Centres. WMO has named stronger polar monitoring, better satellite coordination and stronger regional climate centre networks as possible focus areas for the next IPY.

Where to read the original material

A copy of the original IPY 2007–2008 website, with news items up to the Oslo conference and the closing of the programme office in 2010, can be found at ipy.arcticportal.org. For the next polar year, see IPY 2032–2033.