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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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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Polar Albedo: The Earth’s White Caps Help Keep the Climate in Balance
31.01.2006
Albedo lowers the planet's average temperature. Albedo is a technical term (from the Latin alba for "white") but a very simple concept: the extent to which a surface reflects the Sun's rays. So in the case of the Earth as a whole, the darker its surface on average the more…
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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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Greenland’s Ice Sheet Becoming Top-Heavy
20.10.2005
Scientists from Norway, Russia and the United States have released findings from their study published in Science Express of satellite data over the period 1992-2003 - revealing a new picture of what is happening to Greenland's massive ice-sheet.
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Permafrost: Not Quite So Permanent
05.07.2005
Permafrost is soil (and/or rock) that remains below zero degrees Celsius year-round for at least two consecutive years. It is mostly found in the polar regions and in mountain ranges at high altitude. In recent decades, with global warming, permafrost has decreased in the Arctic and across the world's mountain…
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Polar Ice: The Essentials
21.06.2005
Although polar ice might appear homogenous it is in fact surprisingly diverse, often prompting queries about the differences between the various types of ice found in the polar regions.
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Ice Coring: A Special Selection
24.05.2005
The Greenland icecap is the principal site in the Northern Hemisphere for ice-coring campaigns. Since 1989, European researchers have been working at the summit of the ice sheet where it is the thickest and most stable with respect to its flow towards the coast. Several countries have also set up…
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The Poles: Archives of the World’s Climate
24.05.2005
Studying the past climate of our planet is like detective work. The smallest clue is of importance, the slightest irregularity in the composition of ice, submarine sediments or the soil can provide crucial information which highlights ancient jolts to the Earth's climate. But it is still necessary to know where…
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The Polar Regions: Sentinels of Major Climate Change
24.05.2005
Polar regions are not only keepers of the Earth's climate archives, They also act as sentinels. A kind of early warning system of what can be expected by the planet as a whole ...
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Satellites at the Service of Polar Research
24.05.2005
Satellites have become essential tools for polar research. For example, they track the movements of many birds and mammals at the poles. But they have proved particularly decisive when observing climate change; spatial teledetection has enabled study of changes to the extent of pack ice, the volume of ice caps,…
