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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Cold Comfort: Living and Working in Antarctica
24.05.2005
Life on an Antarctic station varies immensely depending on seasons, location, infrastructure, a country's resources and the availability of supplies.
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The Antarctic Treaty
24.05.2005
The environment, fauna, flora and mineral resources of the Antarctic continent, sub-Antarctic islands and, more generally, everything south of latitude 60°, benefits from almost complete international protection. This is thanks to the Antarctic Treaty which was signed in Washington on December 1st 1959, by twelve countries: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Chile,…
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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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What’s So Crucial about Polar Research?
24.05.2005
Although almost opposites in terms of geography and topography, the common characteristics of the Arctic and the Antarctic are of course their coldness, remoteness and the harshness of their environments. This means that polar researchers must often rely on specially adapted methods and technologies to carry out their work, making…
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Polar Flora and Fauna Facing up to Major Climate Warming
24.05.2005
According to the different climate models developed by researchers and confirmed by the IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), the poles are the regions of the world where climate change is and will be the most rapid. This development is not without impact on the organisms living in these…
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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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The Peoples of the Arctic: The First Victims of Global Warming
24.05.2005
We forget perhaps too easily that the Dolgans, Inuits, Saami and all other natives peoples of the Arctic are the first victims of climate change.
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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…
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Social Science Research Raises Its Profile
24.05.2005
Although Arctic social science research has flourished for many decades, it has also often had to work hard to make its voice heard in the wider, natural science-inclined, polar research community. However, with the advent of the 2007-2008 International Polar Year (IPY) and the dramatic effect which global climate change…
