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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Southern Ocean Winds Open Window to the Deep Sea
18.03.2010
Changes in the winds blowing on the Southern Ocean are responsible for variations in the depth of the surface layer of sea water which regulates the exchanges of heat and carbon dioxide between the ocean and the atmosphere, researchers have found. The findings, to be published in Nature Geoscience, provide…
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Amundsen-Scott Has its Dome Removed
18.03.2010
The dome that was constructed at the Amundsen-Scott base at the South Pole by the Seabees (construction battalions of the US Navy) in the early 1970s was taken down during this past austral summer. A platform for countless scientific discoveries in various fields, the dome could no longer accommodate the…
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Stores of Methane in Arctic Seabed Being Released into Atmosphere
08.03.2010
New results from an international study published in the journal Science show that the permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is perforated and releasing huge amounts of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. Three times as large as the Siberian wetlands, the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is…
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New Findings Back Snowball Earth Theory
05.03.2010
Reporting their findings in the journal Science, a team of geologists led by scientists from Harvard University has found evidence of sea ice reaching until the equator some 716.5 million years ago, adding new elements to support the snowball Earth theory, which theorizes that the Earth has in the past…
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Widely Distributed Debris in Antarctica Points to Airburst Event Long Ago
04.03.2010
The results of new research presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in The Woodlands, Texas show that a large rock from space might have exploded over Antarctica thousands of years ago. The object, which probably weighed some 100,000 tons, is thought to have exploded in the Earth’s…
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Glacier Ice Loss in Alaska Overestimated; Rate Nonetheless Doubled over Past 40 Years
04.03.2010
According to a new study featured in Nature Geoscience that recalculates glacier melt in Alaska, previous studies might have largely overestimated mass loss from Alaskan glaciers over the past 40 years. The study shows that Alaskan glacier melts between 1962 and 2006 actually contributed about one-third less to sea-level rise…
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Catlin Arctic Survey to Study Arctic Ocean Acidification
25.02.2010
The Catlin Arctic Survey 2010, which is to begin in early March, will take leading research scientists to an Ice Base some 1,200 km from the North Geographic Pole to study the potential impact of rising levels of acidity in the Arctic Ocean.
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CryoSat-2 Launch Postponed
22.02.2010
The launch of ESA's CryoSat-2 satellite from Baikonur, Kazakhstan has been postponed due to a concern related to the second stage steering engine of the Dnepr launcher. The Ukranian company Yuzhnoye, which developed the launcher, stated that while the fuel supply of the second stage engine ought to be sufficient…
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ARENA Releases Ten-year Vision for European Astronomy and Astrophysics at Dome C
22.02.2010
In February 2010 the ARENA network (Antarctic Research, a European Network for Astrophysics) issued a press release outlining its 100-page “Vision for European Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Antarctic Station Concordia Dome C in the next decade”.
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Seafloor Sediment Cores from Wilkes Land Offer Insight into Past and Future Climates
19.02.2010
From onboard the JOIDES Resolution, a ship operated by the International Ocean Drilling Program (IODP), morethan 30 researchers from institutions including Stanford University have been drilling into the seafloor to collect sediments as old as 50 million years in an attempt to find clues about Earth's past climate.
