Articles & Interviews
Sciencepoles articles look at key findings from a range of polar science and research fields. Our articles RSS feed will inform you when new articles are published on this website.
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Farewell to the Xue Long and Chinare 25
08.01.2009
Today, sixteen days after leaving Zhongshan Station, the Dome A traverse team are over 1,000 kilometres inland, and less than 200 kilometres from Dome A. Having attained an altitude of over 3,500 metres, oxygen levels are already much reduced and the temperature has dropped to below -30 degrees centigrade. Two…
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Dome A Traverse and Kunlun Station
18.12.2008
This morning, we finally got to wave goodbye to the Dome A traverse team of 28 men. After six weeks of immersion in the 25th Chinese Antarctic Expedition and the emotional speeches and storytelling at the banquet the night before, it was very moving to witness the spontaneous outburst of…
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Frozen Grail: Dome A and the Future of Ice Coring in Antarctica
16.12.2008
Understanding the history of the Earth's climate and atmosphere is not simply an intellectualcuriosity; it is a necessity if we hope to predict and prepare for the impact of human-induced global warming on the global environment.
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Ice Ocean and Atmosphere Science at Zhongshan Station
08.12.2008
First a weather update: The last week has brought us two force ten gales lasting 48 hours each. According to meteorologists here as well as those from the neighbouring Russian station and Australian station (100km away), this is unusual for this time of year. The same is true for the…
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Chinese Antarctic Expedition: Plato and the Future of Astronomy at Dome A
28.11.2008
If Antarctica lives on in our minds as perhaps the most distant and otherworldly of all Earthly environments, than it is all the more remarkable to see how, in recent years, it has itself become a privileged vantage point from which to observe and research other worlds.
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Accompanying China to Antarctica
14.11.2008
It is a paradoxical, but arresting thought that the only continent without an indigenous human population has been the most apt at drawing peoples together. Starting with the Swedish-Norwegian-British expedition of 1949-52, and further reinforced by the International Geophysical Year (IGY) of 1957-58, the signing of the Antarctic Treaty in…
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Stephen Warren: Sampling Arctic Snow to Determine Black Carbon Concentrations
13.06.2008
As a teaching professor whose research includes solar and infrared radiation processes in snow, clouds and sea ice, the Antarctic climate, oceanic processes on Snowball Earth and global cloud climatology, Dr. Stephen Warren from the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington, Seattle has spent part of his…
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Charlie Zender and Florent Dominé: Measuring Albedo of Snow Contaminated with Black Carbon
13.06.2008
Dr. Charlie Zender, Associate Professor and Director of the Earth System Modeling Facility at the University of California, Irvine, and Florent Dominé, CNRS Research Director at the LGGE (Laboratoire de Glaciologie et Géophysique de l'Environnement) in Grenoble, France have been looking into black carbon's effect on snow albedo using a…
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Black Carbon Playing a Major Role in Arctic Climate Change
12.06.2008
In the past few decades, the media has paid a lot of attention to greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide and the role that they play in warming the earth's climate. There are, however, several aerosols which also have a significant impact on regional and global climate. One of these…
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Paul Jolicoeur: IPY Geonorth 2007 and the Proposed Arctic Spatial Data Infrastructure
19.09.2007
From August 20th to 24th, the IPY GeoNorth 2007 Conference took place in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada. The First International Circumpolar Conference on Geospatial Sciences and Applications, the main purpose of the conference was to discuss the planned Arctic Spatial Data Infrastructure (ASDI), which once in place would make it…
