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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Ice-Free Northeast Passage Allows First Commercial Voyage Ever without Icebreakers
08.09.2009
For the fourth time in only five years, the Northeast Passage has opened, cutting 4,500 miles off the 12,500-mile trip from the European Atlantic to the Asian Pacific for shipping companies. Two German ships recently were able to make the first commercial voyage ever through the Northeast Passage without the…
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Climate Change May Alter UV Levels around the Globe
08.09.2009
While the use of ozone-damaging chlorofluorocarbons (CFC's) was phasedout under the 1987 Montreal Protocol, man-made climate change has the potential togreatly affect the ozone layer as well, not through ozone depletion but by influencing the movement of high-altitude winds, according to a recent study conducted by researchers at the University…
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Scool Project Sails through the Northwest Passage
08.09.2009
The Northwest Passage, which links the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans along the northern coast of North America, was successfully crossed for the first time in 1906 by Roald Amundsen will be crossed again by Students' Cloud Observations On-Line (S'COOL).
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Oil Drought Pushing Norway to Search for Oil in the Arctic
04.09.2009
A new report released by the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate shows a faster decline than initially expected in Norway's oil production, as the 123 million tons of oil equivalents from 2008 is expected to decline to 111 million in 2009.
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Greenhouse Gases Overturn 2,000 Years of Natural Cooling
04.09.2009
A new study, led by Northern Arizona University and the National Centerfor Atmospheric Research (NCAR), shows Arctic temperatures in the1990's to have reached their warmest level in at least 2,000 years. The study, to be published in Science, shows that if it hadn't been foranthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, the Arctic…
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New Species Discovered in Arctic Ocean
03.09.2009
Details of research conducted by an international team of scientists using a remote operated vehicle (ROV) who filmed various kinds of jellyfish and other similar animals in the depths of the isolated Arctic Ocean back in 2005 have recently been published in the journal Deep Sea Research Part II.
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New WWF Report Impacts of Warming Arctic More Dire than We Thought
03.09.2009
A new report from World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Arctic Climate Feedbacks: Global Implications, gives projections more ominous than previous projections such as those of the IPCC's 2007 Fourth Assessment Report. The unprecedented peer-reviewed report ibrought together topclimate scientists to assess the current science on Arctic warming.
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Satellites and Submarines Examining Arctic Sea Ice Thickness
02.09.2009
This past summer, a group of students, accompanied by a Canadian senator, a writer, and a filmmaker joined scientists at Resoulte Bay on the icebreaker Louis S. St-Laurent on their journey to the Northwest Passage to get a firsthand look at the sea ice during a workshop designed to increase…
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Taking a Look at At Glacier Retreat on Bylot Island in Greenland
01.09.2009
After spending nearly two decades studying the glaciers on Bylot Island, south of Thule in Greenland, University of Illinois geologist William Shilts has released a study detailing the decline of several glaciers on the island. With photos of the ice cover on the island going back to the 1940s, scientists…
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Inuit Hunting Techniques Helping Scientists
28.08.2009
In Qaanaaq, Greenland, about 850 miles away from the North Pole, an effort to tag narwhals for scientific research is currently underway. The project, which is supported by the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources and lead by Kristin Laidre, an oceanographer at the University of Washington, will use satellite tags…
