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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New Herbivorous Dinosaur Remains Discovered in Antarctica
22.12.2011
With their recent discovery of advanced titanosaur remains in Antarctica, Dr. Ignacio Alejandro Cerda and his colleagues from the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) in Buenos Aires, Argentina have been able to show that this particular variety of dinosaurs were able to achieve global distribution by at…
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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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Antarctic Melting Linked to Tropical Ocean Temperatures
09.12.2011
According to recent research by Professor Erik Steig from the University of Washington, the accelerated melting of the Pine Island and Thwaites Glaciers in West Antarctica could be caused by a rise in sea-surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean.
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Scientist from BBC’s Frozen Planet Investigating Pine Island Glacier Contribution to Sea Level Rise
07.12.2011
This week, a team of two scientists and two support staff from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) left Rothera Research Station on the Antarctic Peninsula for their remote field site on Pine Island Glacier in Western Antarctica to study how the glacier loses ice and its possible contribution future sea…
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Inferring Past Krill Populations from Antarctic Fur Seal Hairs
05.12.2011
A team of scientists from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), Utah State University, the Institute of Oceanology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Brooklyn College have inferred changes in krill numbers by analyzing the shift in a stable Nitrogen-15 isotope (δ15N) marker found in Antarctic…
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Plummeting CO2 Levels Led to Formation of Antarctic Ice Sheet, Study Shows
05.12.2011
According to a paper recently published in the journal Science, a roughly 40% drop in CO2 levels triggered to the formation of Antarctica’s ice sheet approximately 34 million years ago. A team of scientists from Yale and Purdue Universities identified 600 parts of per million of CO2 in the Earth’s…
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Climate Change Stunting Growth of 100-Year-Old Moss Shoots in Antarctica
28.11.2011
In a paper to be published in January in the journal Global Change Biology, a team of scientists from the University of Wollongong (UOW) in conjunction with nuclear scientists from the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization (ANSTO) suggests that mosses, the dominant plants in Antarctica, have been affected by current climate change.…
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Origins of Gamburtsev Sublacial Mountains Explained
17.11.2011
An international team of scientists from seven nations recently published in Nature their findings regarding the origins of the Gamburtsev Subglacial Mountains, located 3 km beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. How the mountains formed is a mystery that has interested scientists since they were first discovered in 1958 as…
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IceBridge Project Finds Major Crack in Pine Island Glacier
31.10.2011
A team of scientists participating in NASA's IceBridge mission were flying over a portion of West Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier on October 14th when they discovered a 29 km crack across the glacier’s tongue. The 80-metre wide crack is the first step in the creation of a massive new 800…
