Paris has witnessed the launch of one of the world’s biggest research programs in the past fifty years as part of the $1.5bn (£763m) International Polar Year (IPY) program with a bid to study the north and south poles.
With climate change at the top of the agenda, the program will carry out more than 200 projects involving thousands of researchers. Since 1882, this will be the fourth IPY.
Over the next two years, an army of researchers from over 60 countries will be studying the Polar Regions in unprecedented detail. To make these studies in the extreme climates, the scientists will be using ice breaking ships, satellites and submarines, climate change being at the main thrust of many of the research projects.
This gargantuan research will surely reveal details on the potential rise in sea level, the melting of ice sheets will lead to in Greenland and Antarctica.
Holding 90% of the world’s fresh water, the southern polar ice sheet once melted, would raise the global sea levels by 200 meters or 650 feet!