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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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…
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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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Permanent Monitoring of the Atmosphere from Svalbard
24.05.2005
Greenhouse gases, organic and inorganic pollutants, aerosol... In order to study climate change, account must be taken of a great many parameters, one of the most important being the rapid evolution in the quality of our atmosphere.
