SciencePoles news
Recent Polar Science and Climate Change news are featured here. Our news RSS feed will inform you when news are published on this website.
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NASA Study Finds Old Arctic Ice Vanishing Rapidly
02.03.2012
A new NASA study has found that the oldest and thickest ice in the Arctic appears to be vanishing faster than the younger and thinner ice at the edges of the ice cap covering the Arctic Ocean.
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Salty Antarctic Soils Suck Moisture from Atmosphere
29.02.2012
Salty soils in the McMurdo Dry Valleys region of Antarctica suck moisture out of the atmosphere, according to research led by Oregon State University geologist Joseph Levy.
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Dwindling Sea Ice in Arctic Contributes to Snowy Winters in Northern Hemisphere
29.02.2012
A study conducted by the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Columbia University provides further evidence of a link between melting sea ice in the Arctic and outbreaks of cold, snowy weather in the Northern Hemisphere.
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Life in Arctic Waters Persists Even in Winter
24.02.2012
According to preliminary results from research funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF), life in the icy waters off the Alaskan coast does not stop completely in winter for microscopic organisms at the base of the food chain, despite cold and dark conditions. This research is particularly interesting as…
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Scientists Revive 32,000 Year-Old Flower Buried in Permafrost
24.02.2012
A team of Russian scientists has been able to revive an extinct species of flowering plant using tissue derived from a nearly 32,000 year-old fruit found buried in the permafrost of northeastern Siberia. The regenerated plant is the oldest grown from preserved plant tissue.
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Russians Reach Subglacial Lake Vostok
09.02.2012
On Sunday 5 February 2012, a Russian drilling team was able to penetrate the surface of Lake Vostok, the largest subglacial lake in Antarctica (250 km long and 30 km wide), which began to be covered by ice between 15 and 34 million years ago. Having not had contact with…
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Moving Teardrop-Shaped Lakes Discovered on George VI Ice Shelf
03.02.2012
Researhcers from the University of Chicago have been keeping an eye on teardrop-shaped lakes on top of the George VI Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula, which travel as much as 1.5 metres a day – but in a very unusual manner.
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Arctic Summer Sea Ice Extent Affects Winters in Central Europe
03.02.2012
Scientists from the Research Unit Potsdam at the Alfred Wengener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) have been able to connect reduced summer sea ice extent in the Arctic with colder and snowier winters in Central Europe in a study published in the journal Tellus A.
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Russian Drill Team Close to Penetrating Lake Vostok
31.01.2012
A Russian drilling team is close to penetrating subglacial Lake Vostok, located more than three and a half kilometers deep in the Antarctic Ice Sheet, not far from the Russian Vostok Station at the Magnetic South Pole. After two decades of drilling through several kilometres of ice, the team is…
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Glacier Retreat in Greenland Not Completely Irreversible, According to Study
31.01.2012
Climate warming and short-term climate variability have pushed a number of massive glaciers in Greenland towards retreat, which has some scientists concerned that the retreat may be irreversible once it has begun. However research published in Geophysical Research Letters suggests that Greenland glaciers’ rapid ice loss may not be an…
