Covering the Poles for over 90 years
The Polar Times is the semi-annual magazine of the American Polar Society. Join the American Polar Society to receive the magazine in your mailbox twice per year to keep informed about what is happening in the Arctic and Antarctica.
Sample from the current magazine
These articles are only available in the print addition of The Polar Times – please join the APS to receive future editions. In addition to the below teaser that provides a behind-the-scenes perspective of the captain of the USCG Healy, readers of the Fall/Winter The Polar Times can read about the science and politics taking place in both polar regions, read the fascinating interview of leading polar explorer, Will Steger, and see the fabulous photos of various polar fauna, including a photo tour of the birds of Svalbard by Dr. Marcelo Flores.
Polar Perspectives: The View from Aloft Conn
By Captain Michele Schallip, USCG
Being commanding officer of a ship designed to work in polar waters is a complex job. The assignment requires understanding, challenging, and sometimes, just respecting the sometimes harsh and unforgiving environment where hardly any other vessels are operating.
Constant attention to sea ice and predicted weather conditions is paramount to safe navigation in ice-covered waters. Unlike in open water, when traversing ice covered waters the shortest and quickest route between two points is not always a straight line. Taking advantage of open leads between floes allows the ship to move faster. For example, if you take a course straight through multiyear or mature first-year floe, the ship will move more slowly due to the thickness of the ice. On the other hand, if you throttle too fast into an older piece the constant slamming and shuddering may indent the hull or damage internal components. Pursuing a course through areas of thinner ice or open water between floes allows the ship to wind around the floe at a faster speed. Finding those leads, however, requires technology and art.
During my first tour aboard a polar vessel, digital imagery would come in over a burst of data, sometimes from a moving satellite target several hours old. The operations officer and navigator would diligently plot our current position, interpolate over time, and draft the most efficient course to our next location. But unlike glaciers, ice in the Arctic Ocean during the summer months is not anchored to land. It’s exceptionally dynamic. Winds and ocean currents may have altered the trajectory of the ice movement, requiring prudent adaptation.
The TPS Vault
The American Polar Society has one of the largest, if not the largest, archives of articles about U.S. activities in the polar region in the form of The Polar Times. We are in the process of digitizing copies and making them available to APS member. Below you will find pictures and snippets of stories that caught our attention as we go through this extensive process. We encourage anyone interested in polar history to join the APS to obtain access to this and other articles from our extensive archives. Please note that these articles have not been altered, edited or updated in order to preserve them in their historical context. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions while not editorializing them.
“Navy Rescues 18 From Melting Arctic Ice Island” was the lead story for the June 1965 edition of The Polar Times. (The 18 individuals were working at the U.S. Navy’s Arlis 2 research station.) Additional polar science articles include “ONR Arctic Research Laboratory”, “Scientists Report on Species Move” (about the new theory developed by a team of American and Soviet scientists of a Bering Strait land bridge that connected Alaska and Siberia), “US Army Scientists Continuing Polar Research in Greenland,” and “Computer an aid in Ocean Studies..”
