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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Diminishing Sea Ice Having Impact on Seal Pup Populations
06.01.2012
Thinning sea ice cover in the North Atlantic is diminishing harp seal breeding grounds and having an impact on the survival rate of seal pups, according to a study published in the online journal PLoS ONE.
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Beaufort Sea Freshening from Russian River Runoff
05.01.2012
The Beaufort Sea has been becoming fresher recently due to changes in the Arctic Oscillation, causing runoff from Russia’s major rivers to be channeled in the direction of the Western Canadian Arctic.
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Floating Arctic University in the Making
04.01.2012
The Northern Russian port city of Arkhangelsk will host a “floating university” for Arctic research and staff training. A joint project between the Arctic Federal University (NArFU) and the Arctic Hydro-Meteorological Service, lectures and courses will be held aboard the Professor Molchanov research vessel as it conducts research in Arctic…
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Greenland Bedrock Rose Faster after Anomalous Ice Loss
14.12.2011
The unusually warm melting season in 2010 led to a spike in ice loss from the southern part of the Greenland Ice Sheet of about 100 billion tons, according to research conducted by Michael Bevis, professor in the School of Earth Sciences at Ohio State University, and colleagues. This spike…
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Arctic Permafrost Has Potential to Release More Carbon than Previously Estimated
30.11.2011
A study looking at survey results from 41 international scientists recently published in the journal Nature suggests that the levels of greenhouse gases to be released from thawing permafrost could be significantly higher than previously estimated.
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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…
