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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Antarctic Ice Sheet Grounding Line Traced from Space
26.07.2010
Establishing the grounding line of the largest freshwater reserve on Earth – the Antarctic Ice Sheet – is important in helping scientists determine exactly how much mass the ice sheet is losing to the ocean and thus how much it’s contributing to global sea level rise. Now, the Antarctic Surface…
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First CryoSat-2 Data Released to Select Scientists
22.07.2010
The first data from CryoSat-2, launched three months ago by the European Space Agency (ESA), were released to a select group of 150 scientists from approximately 40 research institutes around the world. These select scientists had agreed to use this data to help fine-tune the satellite before its data is…
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Project Ice Cube Looks for Neutrinos in Effort to Better Understand the Universe
12.07.2010
Over the past five years, scientists have been placing thousands of detectors into holes 2.4 km deep in the Antarctic Ice Sheet in an effort to gain better insight into cosmological events that release bursts of energy and dark matter to gain better insight into the physical processes associated with…
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Methane Releases from the Arctic to Have Large Impact on Seas Worldwide
08.07.2010
A new study published in the Geophysical Research Letters, suggests that massive releases of methane from the Arctic seabed could cause oxygen-depleted dead zones, sea acidification and disrupt ecosystems in several areas of the northern oceans. These events, the scientists involved in the study say, could happen if global warming…
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Cryosat-2 Surpassing Expectations Halfway through Commissioning Phase
05.07.2010
Halfway through its commissioning phase, the European Space Agency's CryoSat-2 satellite is “in very good shape, exceeding in-orbit specifications,” declared Prof. Duncan Wingham, Lead Investigator for the CryoSat mission at ESA's Living Planet Symposium in Bergen, Norway.
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Climate Change and Recovering Ozone Hole Could Mean More Ozone Pollution
02.07.2010
The ozone hole over Antarctica appears to be recovering from damage caused by man-made ozone-depleting chemicals like chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). But according to research published in Geophysical Research Letters, climate change might change wind patterns and send ozone from the stratosphere 9.6 to 50 km up where it normally resides, protecting…
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Possibly Irreversible Ice-Free Conditions in Arctic as CO2 Levels Climb
30.06.2010
A new international study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder to be published in the journal Geology indicates that the Arctic climate system could be more sensitive to greenhouse warming than previously thought, and that current levels of atmospheric CO2 could be high enough to cause significant, irreversible…
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Shifting Winds Possibly Ended Last Ice Age
28.06.2010
As most scientists are still trying to understand how the Earth emerged from its last ice age, a review paper published this week in the journal Science suggests a global shift in winds as an answer. According to scientists, a chain of events beginning with the melting of the large…
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Scientists Heat Arctic Permafrost in Effort to Better Understand Thawing Processes
28.06.2010
In an effort to better understand the implications of global warming on the various layers of the Arctic permafrost, a group of scientists from the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) will be conducting a large-scale, long-term ecosystem experiment. Because of the large areas covered by permafrost…
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Satellite Used in Polar Research Enters Retirement
28.06.2010
NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) 1, which had been reassigned to the National Science Foundation (NSF) and its U.S. Antarctic Program partners in 1998 to perform scientific, educational, and operational endeavors, will be retired. The satellite transmitted the first Internet connection and live webcast from the North Pole,…
