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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Tuft of Hair Used to Reconstruct Ancient Greenlander
11.02.2010
Scientists at the University of Copenhagen have done the first reconstruction of the nuclear genome of an extinct human using DNA retrieved from tufts of hair and bone fragments from a man who lived in Greenland some 4,000 years ago. Besides the four small pieces of bone and hair, no…
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Slow Arctic Sea Ice Build-up Could Mean Increased Melting This Summer
08.02.2010
The thinner and more fragile sea ice cover on the Arctic Ocean might translate into increased melting in the summertime, according to the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). According to the NSIDC, the problem is that the ice is not growing fast butrather it’s melting at an…
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Exxon Valdez Oil Spil Clean-Up Slowed Due to Lack of Oxygen and Nutrients for Biodegrading Organisms
19.01.2010
Results of research on the biodegradation of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska has been published on the website of Nature Geoscience. The results show that the combination of low concentrations of oxygen and nutrients in the lower layers of the beaches slow down the aerobic biodegradation of remaining…
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Arctic Methane Emissions Reaching Record Levels
19.01.2010
On the heels of a string of reports on the methane emissions from the Arctic permafrost, a new study published in Science shows a massive spike in the amount of methane seeping from Arctic permafrost as it melts. As the study shows, methane emissions have risen by almost one-third in…
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High Arctic a Safer Breeding Ground for Tiny Shorebirds
18.01.2010
A new study published in the journal Science shows that Canadian scientists might have figured out why millions of tiny shorebirds migrate from South America to the Arctic to nest. According to Grant Gilchrist, a biologist with Environment Canada and Carleton University in Ottawa,"the Canadian Arctic supports huge numbers of…
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Warm Arctic, Cold Northern Hemisphere
13.01.2010
Temperatures in the Arctic have skyrocketed to unusually high levels while much of the Northern Hemisphere has been experiencing frigid temperatures in the past few weeks. While one may be prone to blame global warming, scientists say this unusual pattern is part of natural variability, caused by a large area…
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Arctic Tern Shown to Be Farthest-Travelling Animal in the World
13.01.2010
A study by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) published in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that the Arctic tern travels approximately 1.5 million miles (2.4 million kilometres) during its lifetime.
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Arctic Changes Influenced Ice Age Global Climate Patterns
13.01.2010
An international study led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) is being published this week in Nature Geoscience. The study shows that water levels in the Bering Strait helped drive global climate patterns during ice ages dating back more than 100,000 years.
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Sea-Ice Deprived Polar Bears Looking for New Habitat
11.01.2010
Results from a long-term study published in the December issue of Arctic, the quarterly magazine of the Arctic Institute of North America, show changes in polar bears’ habitat in response to changing sea ice conditions in the southern Beaufort Sea.
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Melting Sea Ice Awakens Arctic Ocean
08.01.2010
Results of a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters have shown that the Arctic Ocean’s waters are increasingly supporting summer marine life due to warming-related sea ice loss. Until recently considered to be a rather quiet ocean, researchers from the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory in Seattle have…
