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January/February 2010 issue	In this issue Table of Contents IPY: What is IPY? IPY: Kluane research station IPY: Inuit health IPY: Arctic mercury mystery IPY: Arctic scientist IPY: Future Arctic research IPY: Multimedia The Inside Story Editor’s Notebook Reverberations À la carte Mosaic Book Reviews

TK
Photo: Janice Lang, PCSP/NRCan

• PHOTO ESSAY
• VIDEO
• INTERACTIVE

Tools of the trade: See the unique tools Arctic scientists use in the field

Ice research: An insider’s look at Arctic ice research, part 1 and part 2

IPY by the Numbers: Learn more about Canada’s Arctic IPY projects

With most IPY-related fieldwork done and funding spent, many Arctic scientists are wondering what’s going to happen next. Despite the enormous boost from IPY, there is a genuine fear that they’ll have to return to hitching rides on foreign research ships and seeking funding from sources outside Canada. This is true, and is already happening, to some extent. Polar Shelf was so tight for money in 2008 that glaciologist Martin Sharp, for example, decided to cut his own work and that of a post-doctoral researcher so that his students with Devon Island projects under way could complete them.

Scientists are just starting to assess their IPY data, and Carmack, among others, insists it will take a generation of study to really understand how the Arctic Ocean is responding to and influencing climate.

“We know that the ocean plumbing that has helped keep the Arctic cold for so long is changing,” says Carmack. “But we are only beginning to understand how that is affecting marine life and climate. In many ways, it’s a black hole that we’re looking into. This is really the last unexplored wilderness in North America.”

There are few mechanisms to keep the momentum of IPY going in Canada, aside from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (nserc) and the federal government’s creation in 2008 of a permanent program of Canada Excellence Research Chairs in universities across the country. The Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences (CFCAS) has run out of money to fund climate-change research, and the federal government has been dithering about its future. And nserc’s own Special Research Opportunity program, which provided funding for unique research projects that are timely, urgent and of high risk, was a casualty of the federal budget of the winter of 2009.

Other government departments or agencies can’t make up for the shortfall either. For example, Environment Canada’s science division is so cash-starved that its scientists can’t afford to partner up with research initiatives such as the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory. This year-round facility at Eureka on Ellesmere Island, a beneficiary of the federal infrastructure program, probes the atmosphere in the High Arctic to understand atmospheric conditions linked to ozone, air quality and climate change. But unless funding for Environment Canada and CFCAS is rejuvenated, the chances of keeping the lab going are slim. “I can write a great proposal for continuing the science,” says lab director Jim Drummond, “but I have nowhere to send it.”

Like Carmack’s ongoing study of Arctic oceanography, Drummond’s research is not something that can be stopped and started on a dime. Closing for a year, even a few months, would result in a large gap in the data. A case in point is the recent collapse of some caribou populations. Some of the long-term studies that would have helped us understand what is going on now were cancelled in the 1990s.

Many scientists, especially those in universities, are questioning whether they should even be encouraging students to take up Arctic research. Andrew Derocher is one of them. He was initially optimistic about returning to Canada after the University of Alberta offered him a full professorship to bring him back from Norway in 2002. A plan at the time by the former Liberal government to create 24 university research chairs in polar science suggested that the Canadian government was finally taking the North seriously. But, in the end, only six chairs were established. Now most of the money Derocher has to study polar bears in Canada comes from the United States.

Over the years, there have been calls for a University of the Arctic, a federal ministry of the Arctic and a Canadian Polar Institute, based, in part, on the Norwegian model. There have also been calls for a Canadian ambassador for the Arctic, to replace the one the Conservatives did away with several years ago. But none of these ideas have come to fruition.

Drummond and Sharp agree there’s a real danger that, despite the infusion from IPY, the problems of a decade ago may be repeated. “The opportunities in other countries are now better, and our young scientists are moving to greener pastures,” says Drummond. “One can hardly blame them. It is difficult to get young scientists to join the program when you only have a few months of funding to offer.”

“I don’t want to sound like a scientist whining for more funding,” says Sharp. “The fact is that we’ve trained all these great students and post-docs in polar research during IPY, and now there are few opportunities for them to continue this work in Canada.”