Polar CAP (Climate Ambassadors Program) Summer Internship - Applications opened for 2026 through 3/1/26!
Designed around the principles of INSPIRE - INFORM - ACTIVATE this program is from youth for youth! We bring together high school/secondary age students interested in learning and communicating about the importance of our polar regions. We engage youth through resources that showcase the Arctic and Antarctic, then through a range of tools we explore the climate messages and connections that link us to these incredibly important areas, and finally we support these ambassadors as they create their own resources and assist in locating opportunities to share and inspire others! Interested? To learn more about our summer in person internship program read more here and below. Be sure to apply here before March 1st, 2026. Contact Margie Turrin with questions.
Use your mouse to hoover over the Polar CAP interns images below to hear directly from them about their program experiences.
Image Carousel with 9 slides
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Slide 1: Spending time with community members taught me to listen first, then share information in a way that ties into their own experiences. It’s helped me build trust, adapt how I explain things, and have more meaningful conversations.
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Slide 2: When we taught the little kids what we’ve learned about Earth's climate and the small things we can do to help 'make it feel better again.' We shared this knowledge through fun, hands-on activities that we created to make learning enjoyable and engaging for them.
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Slide 3: Polar CAP showed me how the polar regions feel both impossibly far away and deeply connected to everything I care about. I came in knowing they shaped our climate. I left seeing their impact everywhere from the tides of the Hudson to the shifting weather in my hometown. It taught me that science is not just something to learn, but something to share, and that a single conversation can carry a piece of the Arctic into someone else’s world.
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Slide 4: My favorite part about doing outreach is to create connections with people I wouldn't normally engage with. I loved how passionate the kids were about trivia and how it felt like they were truly absorbing the information while having fun playing.
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Slide 5: At the end of the day the most important thing for the average American to understand is how much we need this new research and technological development to happen. As a result we need the funding to keep this happening which is a major thing that the average American can in fact impact.
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Slide 6: In an era of growing distrust in science, it’s important that science research is shared with broad audiences. As a Polar Ambassador, I was able to develop and present hands-on science experiments about climate change and the polar regions to the public at Science Saturdays.
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Slide 7: What I valued most about my summer internship is the opportunities given to practice what we have learned, and come up with our own ideas on what we can share.
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Slide 8: One thing I really liked was hearing the many tales of adults that took their time to sit with me (even kids had interesting things to say). It was wonderful expirence and I hope I get to do more in the future.
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Slide 9: Most people don’t understand that the polar regions heavily influence cooling of the earth with albedo, and how much it contributes to SLR if the ice melts.
Check out these short videos, including What Scientists Say We Can Do to Fight Climate Change and more!
The Polar Climate Ambassadors are solutions-focused, creating this graphic and this list of what you can do in your life. Keep growing by adding your ideas!
Explore Thwaites Glacier by selecting a topic and interacting with a map and related data.
Polar Ambassador Video
GreenDrill Project Finds a Greenland That is Changing Rapidly
The GreenDrill Project is exporing when Greenland was last ice free by drilling through the ice to the bedrock below and using cosmogenic nuclide test to determine when the rock was last exposed to the atmosphere. The Polar Climate Ambassadors created a set of vidoes that focused on the scientists working on this project. You can find the videos on our youtube page. Here is a playlist selection to review!