The polar regions have been fascinating explorers, researchers and scientists for centuries. Also our technological capacities advanced considerably since the early days, the challenges for direct observations in the polar regions remain: cold, dark, stormy, far. The main thing which changed, however, is the urgency with which we have to understand the processes happening in the polar regions and how the compartments of the Earth system are interlinked: the polar regions are hotspots of climate change. With a focus on the cryosphere this talk presents selected challenges how to investigate and understand the processes in the Arctic and Antarctic and wants to shed light on present day approaches to successful research: global multidisciplinary collaboration.
