Steve Cole
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-0918
stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov

MEDIA ADVISORY: M08-056

MEDIA INVITED TO NASA CO-SPONSORED 'POLAR-PALOOZA' TOUR

WASHINGTON - "Polar-Palooza: Stories from a Changing Planet," an
education initiative supported by NASA and the National Science
Foundation (NSF), comes to the National Geographic Society in
Washington on March 13 as part of a national tour of science centers
and museums.

Polar-Palooza is a multimedia presentation featuring original
high-definition video clips, polar artifacts, soundscapes and
photographs - along with engaging stories from some of the country's
leading polar experts - designed to explain to a general audience the
effects on the polar regions of global climate changes.

The news media are invited to attend the March 13 event, which begins
at 7:30 p.m. EDT, at the National Geographic building, 1600 M Street,
NW. Polar scientists participating in this event will be available
for interviews at the National Geographic building between noon and 2
p.m. on March 13. Reporters also can observe a Polar-Palooza student
workshop that morning.

The Polar-Palooza event, a presentation of the "National Geographic
Live!" lecture series, features Waleed Abdalati of NASA's Goddard
Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.; Richard Alley, a geoscientist at
Pennsylvania State University; Jackie Richter-Menge, a sea ice
researcher with the Army Corps of Engineers Cold Regions Research and
Engineering Laboratory; Richard Glenn, a geologist, whaler and vice
president of the Alaskan Native-owned Lands at the Arctic Slope
Regional Corp.; Michael Castellini of the University of Alaska,
Fairbanks; and Andy Revkin, environmental reporter with the New York
Times.

NASA and NSF are funding Polar-Palooza as part of their contribution
to the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-2008, a global scientific
campaign involving scientists from more than 60 nations. For more
information about IPY activities on the Web, visit:

http://www.ipy.gov