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.

Operation Ice Bridge Almost Half Completed

03.11.2009

Operation Ice Bridge, A research program by NASA in cooperation withuniversity researchers to image what's happening both on and under theice in West Antarctica, has already completed seven of the 17 plannedflights in the research operation, meaning it is almost halway finished and well on its way tofinishing by mid-November.…
CHINARE 26 to Complete First Land Cover Map of Antarctica

29.10.2009

The 26th Chinese Antarctic Research Expedition (CHINARE), which left Shanghai on October 11th, is expected to complete the first land-cover map of Antarctica by the end of this year. The new map will be the most precise map of Antarctica to date, with a precision of about 15 metres, about…
Scientists Put Recent Antarctic Minimum Snowmelt into Context

28.10.2009

A recent study by Drs. Andrew Monaghan and Marco Tedesco published in October 2009 in Geophysical Research Letters documented minimum snowmelt n Antarctica during the 2008-09 austral summer and a lower than normal snowmelt during several recent years. The results, which are based on records from the satellite era going…
Ice Loss from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Slower than Previously Estimated

21.10.2009

Results of improved ground measurements in West Antarctics were recently published in the online journal Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems of the American Geophysical Union and the American Geochemical Society. The measurements, made in the framework of theWest Antarctic GPS Network (WAGN) project, showed that the rate of ice loss of the…
First Flight Completed for Operation Ice Bridge

20.10.2009

The first in a long series of flights under Operation Ice Bridge took off on October 16th from Punta Arenas, Chile. A research program by NASA in cooperation with university researchers to image what's happening both on and under the ice in West Antarctica, the purpose of Operation Ice Bridge…
New Clues on Formation of Krill Swarms

15.10.2009

Krill swarm formation, a subject previously unstudied by science, hasbeen investigated recently by a team of scientists from the BritishAntarctic Survey. The report, which was published in the journal DeepSea Research I, shows the team discovered two types of swarm.
Polar and Tropical Temperatures Nearly the Same 50 to 60 Million Years Ago

12.10.2009

Some 50 to 60 million years ago the temperature difference between thesea waters near the equator and at the poles was very small: This is theconclusion reached by a team of scientists from Utrecht University, the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ) and the Universityof California at Santa Cruz…
Albatross Camera Sheds Light on Feeding Interaction with Killer Whale

07.10.2009

A study led by scientists from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the Japanese National Institute of Polar Reasearch in Tokyo and Hokkaido University in January 2009 has yielded its first results. As part of a UK-Japan International Polar Year (IPY) project, four Black-browed albatrosses from the Bird Island colony in…
Antarctic Expedition Looking to Learn More about Weddell Seals’ Survival Strategies

06.10.2009

Eight years after her last visit to Antarctica to study the habits of the Weddell Seal, Biologist Terrie Williams from the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) has returned to Antarctica to find out how the Weddell seal can survive the cold temperatures underneath the sea ice at McMurdo…
Robot Submarine to Explore Melting underneath West Antarctic Ice Sheet

02.10.2009

Geologists from Northern Illinois University in partnership with researchers from the University of California at Santa Cruz, Montana State University and several others will be undertaking a five-year investigation of melting at the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Dubbed WISSARD, (Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling), the multi-million dollar project…