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.

Arctic Sea Ice Captured by Satellite

17.09.2010

The Arctic Ocean, the Earth’s northernmost ocean, is covered by a dynamic cover of ice that grows during the winter and shrinks again in the summer. On September 3rd, 2010, NASA's Aqua satellite, captured microwaves emitted by the sea ice, which was used to produce an image of the Arctic…
Massive Methane Releases Being Studied in Antarctica

08.09.2010

Over the next three years, Argentinean geologist Rodolfo del Valle and his team will be heading to Antarctica to probe the sea ice and sea bed in the Erebus and Terror Gulf in order to study a methane gas leak first discovered in 2000. The gas source, scientists fear, could…
Melting Rate in Greenland and Western Antarctica Half of Previous Estimates

08.09.2010

A study by a team of scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), and the Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON), recently published a study in Nature Geoscience suggesting that previous assessments of the melting rate of the ice sheets over Greenland and West Antarctica…
IceCube Neutrino Observatory to be Completed in December 2010

31.08.2010

December 2010 should see the completion of the world’s first kilometer-scale neutrino observatory, IceCube, located beneath the surface of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Neutrinos are among the most abundant particles in the universe, and although they are formed by the most violent events in the universe, they have no charge,…
NASA’s ICESat Satellite Has Re-entered Earth’s Atmosphere after Final Successful Scientific Mission

31.08.2010

NASA’s Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation (ICESat) satellite was decommissioned after successfully completing its last scientific mission earlier this year and re-entered Earth’s atmosphere on Monday, August 30th. Debris from the ICESat spacecraft fell to Earth in the Barents Sea at approximately 5:00 am Eastern Daylight Time (09:00 GMT).
CO2 Release from Oceans at End of Last Ice Age Occured at Regional, Not Global Scale, New Study Says

26.08.2010

In a recent paper published in the journal Nature, a team of scientists lead by Rutgers Univsersity in New Jersey suggest that a massive carbon dioxide escape from the oceans could have occurred over a 1,000 year period after the end of the last glaciation. The paper shows that the…
Ice-free Arctic Not Very Effective as Carbon Sink

03.08.2010

While researchers in past years suggested a melting Arctic Ocean could be an ally in the struggle against rising levels of carbon dioxide, new research published in the journal Science shows this may not be the case. The results of a survey conducted in the waters of the Canada Basin…
Tree Ring Study Shows Signs of Reversing Arctic Cooling

31.07.2010

While some parts of the Arctic have cooled over the past century, overall temperatures have seen a steady rise since 1990, according to a summer temperature reconstruction for the past 400 years. In their study, which was published in the journal Arctic, Antarctic and Alpine Research, scientists from the Institute…
Cutting Soot Emissions Best Hope for Arctic Sea Ice, Study Shows

31.07.2010

In a new study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research–Atmospheres, Mark Jacobson, director of Stanford University’s Atmosphere/ Energy Program, found that the influence of black carbon (soot) has been widely underestimated regarding its contribution to global warming. Controlling soot, Jacobson says, may be the only option for saving the…
Polar View Antarctic Node Recognized for Its Contribution to Marine Safety in Southern Ocean

27.07.2010

While remote, the Southern Ocean is increasingly being used as route for sea traffic by scientists, transport companies and fisheries. However conditions ranging from pack ice to icebergs are a serious threat to marine safety. Because of its remote location, the most adequate means to survey the area is satellite…