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’s Operation IceBridge 2012 Arctic Season Underway
20.03.2012
NASA’s Operation IceBridge to measure sea and land ice at the Poles began its mission for the 2012 Arctic season on 13 March. From now until May, a modified P-3 aircraft will fly daily missions out of Thule and Kangerlussaq in Greenland and will also make a trip to Fairbanks,…
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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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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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Engineering Team for Lake Ellsworth Drilling Project Completes Deep-Field Expedition
17.01.2012
Four engineers from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) have returned to the UK after completing a journey to one of the harshest parts of Antarctica to put in place equipment and supplies for the Lake Ellsworth Subglacial Lake drilling project, which will explore an ancient lake buried 3 km deep…
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Floating Arctic University in the Making
04.01.2012
The Northern Russian port city of Arkhangelsk will host a “floating university” for Arctic research and staff training. A joint project between the Arctic Federal University (NArFU) and the Arctic Hydro-Meteorological Service, lectures and courses will be held aboard the Professor Molchanov research vessel as it conducts research in Arctic…
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Bedrock Map Reveals Antarctic Topography
16.12.2011
A new comprehensive digital map of Antarctica’s bedrock topography called BEDMAP2 has been produced by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) using data compiled from an international team of researchers. The map was produced using over 27 million points of data acquired by planes, satellites, ships and dog-drawn sleds over the…
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International Team of Scientists Validates ESA’s CryoSat Data in Antarctica
09.12.2011
An international team of Australian and German scientists has concluded the first leg of a major in-situ measurement campaign to validate data from the European Space Agency’s CryoSat mission. The campaign focused on the region around Law Dome and Totten Glacier in East Antarctica, both ideal locations to collect validation…
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NOAA Mapping Remote Areas of the Arctic
13.07.2011
The losses in sea ice coverage have made the Arctic easier to navigate. Remote areas have become more accessible and vessel traffic is on the rise, creating a need for updated nautical maps of these sparsely charted regions.
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Banding Penguins for Research Can Harm them, Study Shows
14.01.2011
According to research findings published in the journal Nature, placing flipper bands on penguins to track them in research studies could have a negative effect on them. It appears that penguins wearing bands produced fewer chicks and had a higher mortality rate than penguins not wearing any bands.
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New Submarine Will Allow Scientists to Explore underneath Ross Ice Shelf
21.12.2010
A new remotely operated submersible vehicle destiend for Antarctic exploration was presented at the American Geophysical Union by geologist Ross Powell from Northern Illinois University.
