"Researchers Take Poles' Temperature"

[GreenPartyVoter]

LONDON (AP) - More than 50,000 scientists from 63 nations turned their attention to the world's poles Monday to measure the effects of climate change, using icebreakers, satellites and submarines to study everything from the effect of solar radiation on the polar atmosphere to the exotic marine life swimming beneath the Antarctic ice.

The International Polar Year unifies 228 research projects under a single umbrella with the aim of monitoring the health of the Earth's polar regions and gauging the impact of global warming. The largest international research program in 50 years, the project officially begins March 1 and ends in 2009 - to allow each pole to run through a full summer and winter.

"Global warming is the most challenging problem that our civilization has faced," Britain's chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, said in a video played before the event's launch. He called the melting of polar ice "the canary in the coal mine for global warming."

The year is being sponsored by the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization and the International Council for Science. About $1.5 billion has been earmarked for the year's projects by various national exploration agencies, but most of the money comes from pre-existing polar research budgets.

http://apnews1.iwon.com/article/20070227/D8NHNF700.html