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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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,…
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Thermophilic Bacteria in Lake Vostok

24.05.2005

Glaciers sometimes hide a lake under their thick layers of ice. And some of these lakes fascinate researchers, particularly because they may contain as yet unknown life forms. In the Antarctic, beneath the Vostok research station, such a lake, of gigantic proportions (a surface area of 14,000 km2), is whetting…
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Ice Coring: In Whisky Veritas

24.05.2005

Interview with one of the founding fathers of ice coring, Claude Lorius.
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IceCube: Antarctica’s Crystal Ball

24.05.2005

Buried deep within the East Antarctic ice sheet at the South Pole, a giant high-energy neutrino observatory due for completion in 2009 could provide scientists including from Europe with an unprecedented window to the Universe, as well as a means to answer some of the most fundamental questions of astrophysics…