Quoted: Join thousands of concerned climate activists across the country as we jump into cold bodies of water - or ski down slopes in our shorts! - on December 8th, raising money and awareness and making clear our demand during this critical election season: Keep Winter Cold! Fight Global Warming!

Quoted: A fabled Arctic shipping route from the Atlantic to Pacific is now open due to ice loss, Europe's space agency says.

Quoted: Arctic ponds that date back thousands of years are disappearing as global warming increases evaporation rates, a development that may alter the ecological balance in the frozen north, scientists said.

The researchers at Canada's Queen's University and University of Alberta examined two dozen ponds on Ellesmere Island, beginning in 1983. By 2006, they found many of the ponds were drying up over the summer, and others were shrinking.

The International Polar Year is a large scientific programme focused on the Arctic and the Antarctic from March 2007 to March 2009.

Quoted: Cambridge in America. Currently Co-Director of the Alaska Mountain Safety Center, Inc. Jill Fredston is one of North America's leading avalanche specialists, as well as being an accomplished rower and explorer. Her book Rowing to Latitude: Journey along the Arctic’s Edge (Farrar, Straus & Giroux/North Point Press) won the 2002 National Outdoor Book Award for Literature. Her most recent book Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches was published in November 2005. Her talk entitled A View from Water Level will discuss what makes a place wild as well as the shifting baselines of wilderness and touch on her most recent work studying polar bears, shrinking habitats, adaptation of species and reconciling science and policy.