Posted April 23, 2021
Modern polar scientific expeditions originated with the first International Polar Year in 1882–1883 and have developed further during each of the three subsequent International Polar Years, the most recent in 2007–2008. The idea for the first International Polar Year can be traced back to the 1870s, when the Austro-Hungarian military officer Karl Weyprecht campaigned for ship-borne expeditions to be replaced with a multinational network of land-based Arctic observatories or geophysical stations following the “failure” of an Arctic expedition he had led with another officer.
1 As a result of Weyprecht’s campaign, during the first International Polar Year 11 European nations combined their expeditions to study meteorology and magnetic phenomena in the Arctic.