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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Auroras: Mysterious Lights in the Sky
16.03.2007
Auroras are wondrous and mysterious phenomena occurring primarily in the polar regions of the Earth. During an aurora, coloured bands of light appear in the sky and seem to dance around creating an eerie yet spectacular light show in the sky. They are a constantly occurring phenomenon, although they are…
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Arctic Climate Change: ACIA Report Summary
08.11.2006
Our climate is already changing, particularly in the Arctic where the permafrost is melting, glaciers are receding, and sea ice is disappearing. Changes in the Arctic not only affect local people and ecosystems but also the rest of the world, because the Arctic plays a special role in global climate.
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Atmosphere, Isotopes and the Polar Record of Global Climate
27.10.2006
Dr. Pieter Tans is a Senior Scientist at the NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory (ESLR). Dr. Tans is an acclaimed expert in carbon cycle and greenhouse gases. He has been studying atmospheric chemistry for over 30 years, utilizing every available resource from field measurements of gas exchange in current atmosphere…
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International Polar Year Focuses on Climate Change
28.09.2006
Of the nearly 220 international research projects endorsed by the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-08, around half will be looking at the effects of climate change in the Polar Regions, and the implications of this change for the Earth's climate system as a whole. In this feature, SciencePoles examines the…
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The ABCs of the IPY 2007-2008
01.09.2006
The International Polar Year (IPY) 2007-2008 has adopted the slogan "Polar Science - Global Impact" as the IPY will be an interdisciplinary and internationally coordinated research campaign, expected to usher in a new era of polar science. The international scientific community is eagerly anticipating its start in March 2007, as…
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Time Travelling to See How Changes in the Greenhouse Effect Have Caused Changes in Climate
26.04.2006
On March 23rd, SciencePoles spoke with Dominique Raynaud from France's Laboratoire de Glaciologie et Géophysique de l'Environnement, who has worked for some time on understanding the "story of the ice" what the ice cores extracted in recent years from the polar ice are telling us about the planet's climate history.…
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Climate Change: The Essentials
21.12.2005
Climate change linked to global warming is a critical issue for polar scientists and researchers. The climate of the poles is changing faster than the rest of the world and what once seemed immutable aspects of the polar climate, such as Arctic sea ice at the North Pole, are now…
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Atmospheric Circulation
08.06.2005
Atmospheric circulation is one of the key factors driving regional changes in wind, temperature, precipitation, moisture and other climatic variables. This large-scale movement of air (together with ocean circulation) is the means by which heat is distributed across the Earth's surface, particularly northward from the equator towards the poles. Without…
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The Greenhouse Phenomenon and Climatic Feedback
24.05.2005
The composition of the atmosphere imprisoned in polar ice informs researchers about the glacial and interglacial episodes which our planet has experienced, including how greenhouse gases, such as CO2 and CH4, are involved in these processes as part of a feedback loop.
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Ozone Story
24.05.2005
The discovery of a hole in the zone layer goes back to the 1980s. It was in the Antarctic that the first ground measurements of ozone levels produced some surprising results. As early as 1985, Joseph Farman, from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), published the results of his observations in…
