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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Current Arctic Sea Ice Loss Unprecedented for past 1,500 Years
25.11.2011
Scientists at Natural Resources Canada have reported in a study published in Nature that recent dramatic Arctic sea ice loss is greater than any natural variation in the past 1,500 years. The loss has been driven by a series of factors that never coincided in historical periods of major sea ice…
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Treeline in Alaska seeing Faster-Growing Tree Species in a Warming Climate
14.11.2011
A study recently published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, found that some white spruce trees in the far north of Alaska have experienced a growth spurt over the course of the past century, particularly since 1950. The study covers 1,000 years of climate history and suggests that ecosystems in…
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Colossal Storm Hits Alaska
14.11.2011
During the second week of November, a major storm that meteorologists refer to as an “extra tropical cyclone” hit Alaska’s western coastline, pounding the region with heavy snow and unusually strong winds. The storm displaced thousands of coastal residents and left behind widespread damage, including flooding, power outages and destroyed…
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Improving Our Understanding of Ice Formation in Arctic Clouds
07.11.2011
It is quite common to find shallow, persistent cloud layers made from a mixture of both liquid water droplets and ice crystals in the Arctic. In cloud tops warmer than -38°C, aerosols that freeze at warmer temperatures, known as ice nuclei, are needed for ice crystals to form.
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Studying How Microbes in Permafrost Respond to Thawing
07.11.2011
Recent assessments estimate that Arctic permafrost stores as much as 1,672 billion metric tons of carbon – 250 times what the United States emitted in greenhouse gasses in 2009. As temperatures rise, scientists worldwide are concerned about the possible consequences of a massive release of carbon from the soils thawing…
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Reindeer’s Cooling Strategy Examined
31.10.2011
Reindeer fur keeps the animals well protected from the freezing Arctic temperatures. However what’s puzzled scientists has been how reindeer manage to keep cool during sustained physical activity. A team from the University of Tromsø in Norway determined reindeer’s strategies to keep cool in a study published in The Journal…
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Greenland Mud Volcanoes Possible Birthplace of Terrestrial Life
31.10.2011
In a study recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an international team of scientists lead by by researchers from the Laboratoire de Géologie de Lyon identified the mud volcanoes at Isua in southwest Greenland as a possible source of primitive life on Earth. During the…
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Greenland Ice Sheet Sees Extreme Melting Despite Less than Record Temperatures
21.10.2011
In their preliminary results posted online, a team from the Cryospheric Processes Laboratory at the City College of New York (CCNY) led by Dr. Marco Tedesco explains how the Greenland Ice Sheet can experience extreme melting even when temperatures do not reach record highs.
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NASA-led Study Shows Unprecedented Ozone Depletion in Arctic
05.10.2011
An international study led by NASA recently published in Nature indicates an unprecedented depletion in the ozone layer over the Arctic occurred last winter and spring. Scientists say the cause of the depletion appears to have been an unusually long period of extremely low temperatures in the stratosphere.
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Half of Canadian Ice Shelves Lost in Last Six Years
30.09.2011
A study conducted by Derek Mueller from Carleton University and Luke Copland from the University of Ottawa shows that Canada has been losing its ice shelves at un unprecdented rate; 50% have been lost over the past six years.
