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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Julian Gutt: The Antarctic Polarstern / CAML Expedition ANTXXIII/8
09.01.2007
Huge areas of sea floor (around 3,250 km2) have been freed up by the collapse 4 years ago of the Larsen B platform along the Antarctic Peninsula, leaving a blank spot on Antarctic maps. Polarstern, the research flagship of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, will shortly…
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Icebreaker Polarstern to Explore Antarctic Seafloor
15.11.2006
Huge areas of sea floor (around 3,250 km2) have been freed up by the collapse 4 years ago of the Larsen B platform along the Antarctic Peninsula" leaving a blank spot on Antarctic maps. Polarstern, the research flagship of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, will shortly…
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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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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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Connecting Arctic Sea Ice and Tibetan Plateau Snow Cover
07.06.2006
Rising global temperatures are melting glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau at an increasingly rapid rate. This may have caused many serious flooding occurrences in the past decade and could contribute to future serious water shortages (and other ecological problems). In response to this growing problem, the Polar Research Institute of…
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Climate Change Impacts Differ for Little-Known Arctic and Antarctic Seafloor Life
15.05.2006
Sciencepoles talked to Dr. Julian Gutt, of Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute, just after his address, at the BEPOLES workshop, on "Climate-induced biodiversity shift in polar benthic communities?", which looked at how climate change might affect ecosystems on polar sea floors. Towards the end of 2006, Dr Gutt will lead a…
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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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Goodbye Gulf Stream by 2200
07.07.2005
In a paper published in Science in June 2005, Ruth Curry of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and Cecilie Mauritzen of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute report that patterns of fresh water accumulation in the Nordic Seas (in the Arctic) in recent decades suggest that the Gulf Stream would cease…
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What Would Happen If the Gulf Stream Stopped?
24.05.2005
For most people, slowing or even stopping the Gulf Stream could only be a sci-fi story. This vast oceanic current on the surface of the Atlantic, which runs from the intertropical zone towards the shores of Europe (thus ensuring our warm winters and temperate summers) cannot simply "break down". However,…
