December 1st is “Antarctica Day”!
The 2011 Antarctica Day will be held on Thursday, December 1st. The event celebrates the signature day of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, and is intended to engage the next generation in recognizing Antarctica’s lessons in international governance and the significance of its science in planning how to manage our changing world.
Antarctica Day began in 2010 as an annual legacy of the Antarctic Treaty Summit (http://www.atsummit50.aq). The 2010 event was celebrated with an inaugural lecture at the University of Cambridge’s Scott Polar Research Institute, a balloon launch held in 15 countries on six continents, and an international webinar hosted by PolarTREC (Teachers and Researchers Exploring and Collaborating, http://www.polartrec.com).
This year’s events will again include balloon launches and a PolarTREC webinar. The 2011 webinar will be held live from Antarctica (http://www.polartrec.com/polar-connect). Multiple collaboration options are available for anyone who would like to participate in Antarctic Day:
– Consider initiating your own Antarctica Day activity;
– Inform local libraries about Antarctica Day so they can display books about Antarctica on December 1st; and
– Launch a virtual balloon for Antarctica Day to signal “common interest” from around the world (http://apecs.is/antarcticaday).
Anyone active in primary or secondary schools who would like to create an Antarctica Day activity or who would benefit from educational materials about Antarctica (such as the book ‘Polar Science and Global Climate: An International Resource for Education and Outreach,’ which emerged from the International Polar Year 2007-08), is invited to contact Allen Pope at APECS (apope00@gmail.com). Suggestions for Antarctica Day activities this year or in the future are also welcome.
For further information, including Antarctica Day fliers, please go to: http://apecs.is/education-outreach/antarctica-day.
And a very cool image I found showing the relative sizes of the U.S. and Antarctica:
AntarcticArctic 