Landmark polar sciences experiment announced for next decade

Humanity’s oldest and longest-running climate experiment, the International Polar Year (IPY), will run for the fifth time in history next decade, with IPY-5 planned for 2032-2033. IPY-5 could be the most consequential iteration of the experiment yet, writes researcher Paul Arthur Berkman in a new paper in Cambridge Prisms: Coastal Futures. The first IPY took place in 1882-1883. 

There is no time to lose in studying the Arctic and working towards climate solutions. Ice is diminishing rapidly in both polar zones, changing planetary albedo, and methane outgassing from the Arctic is increasing greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere. The Arctic in particular is also a region of geopolitical complexities with superpowers, and Arctic research is incomplete without all nations. 

The International Polar Year research programme was created during a Solar Maximum – which is the time of greatest solar activity during the Sun’s 11-year cycle – and ran for the first time in 1882-1883 following the Little Ice Age in Europe, with the aim of coordinating an international scientific effort to research and document polar phenomena, such as geophysical measurements related to glaciers and freezing temperatures.  

The 5th International Polar Year is being described as a “crucial new phase in a 150-year-old process” by the International Arctic Science Committee and Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research. It is an experiment whose implications surrounding polar science and the role of polar regions in global climatic processes could be crucial for humanity.  
 

Professor Paul Arthur Berkman, of the Science Diplomacy Center, the International Science Council, the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, and the International Institute of Science Diplomacy and Sustainability at UCSI University, said:  

“Researching Arctic Phenomena isn’t purely a scientific endeavour: it’s also highly relevant to diplomacy and addressing the climate emergency as an international community. 

“Science diplomats can broker dialogues among allies and adversaries alike simply by introducing questions, rather than seeking answers or making recommendations.” There is triangulation with research, education and leadership empowered with questions to reveal patterns, trends and processes for decision-making about biogeophysical and socioeconomic systems. 

“Especially with climate science and polar research, natural sciences, social sciences and Indigenous knowledge have enormous potential for working together to help humanity create resilience and stability in response to our dynamic world continuously across, subnational, national, and international jurisdictions.” 

Polar experiments can trigger global change 

Berkman noted that IPY-5 has the potential to be transformational across the 21st century, just as the 3rd International Polar Year (IPY-3) was last century. IPY-3, which was renamed the International Geophysical Year (IGY) in 1957-1958, initiated the satellite era and awakened Earth system science with the first International Decade in 1961. Importantly, IGY lessons about international scientific cooperation provided a roadmap for superpowers to create the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, as the first nuclear arms agreement, and decades later to establish the Arctic Council as a “high level forum”, ultimately to ensure the North Pole be a pole of peace. Such science diplomacy is much needed today in both polar regions.   

With imagination and global considerations about the transdisciplinary research opportunities that will emerge with IPY-5, as with its IPY-3 predecessor, Berkman wonders: “Will IPY-5 awaken the first International Century among its legacies with science diplomacy to transform research-into-action for the benefit of all on Earth across generations?”