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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Whaling did not Lead Rare Whales to Near-Extinction
19.02.2010
With fewer than 350 individuals remaining, North Atlantic right whales were thought to have been a victim of 16th and 17th century whaling. However a recent study of ancient whale bones published in Conservation Genetics shows that the population of northern right whales had always been small with a limited…
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Seafloor Sediment Cores from Wilkes Land Offer Insight into Past and Future Climates
19.02.2010
From onboard the JOIDES Resolution, a ship operated by the International Ocean Drilling Program (IODP), morethan 30 researchers from institutions including Stanford University have been drilling into the seafloor to collect sediments as old as 50 million years in an attempt to find clues about Earth's past climate.
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New Study Offers Novel Approach to Mercury Tracking in the Arctic
15.02.2010
The results of a study by University of Michigan researchers and published in Nature Geoscience offers a new approach to tracking the movement of mercury through Arctic ecosystems.
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Shifts in Climate Systems Could Occur without Warning
11.02.2010
A new study from the University of California at Davis published in the journal Ecology Letters shows that predicting when climate “tipping points” will occur is more difficult than initially thought.
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British Scientists Study Hydrothermal Vents in Southern Ocean
09.02.2010
Scientists on the British research ship RRS James Cook have been working a mile and a half deep on the seabed of the Southern Ocean to try and understand the extreme environment surrounding hydrothermal vents.
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Acidifying Oceans Major Threat to Entire Marine Food Web
08.02.2010
Atmospheric CO2 is causing climate change worldwide, and the world’s oceans are no exception to the rule. As a natural sink for CO2, the oceans absorb the gas from the atmosphere. However as CO2 concentrations increase, this increases the acidity of seawater, as the absorption of CO2 leads to an…
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Non-lethal Antarctic Whale Research Expedition Begins aboard RV Tangaroa
01.02.2010
Scientists from Australia, New Zealand, and France have embarked on the RV Tangaroa for an expedition to study whales as part of the Southern Ocean Research Partnership. The first truly international and multidisciplinary research collaboration with a focus on improving the conservation of whales was launched on 29 January by…
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New Genetic Analysis of Antarctic Minke Whales Challenges “Krill Surplus Hypothesis”
20.01.2010
A new genetic analysis of Antarctic minke whales published this week in the journal Molecular Ecology suggests that these smaller whales have not benefited from excessive hunting of other larger whale species during the beginning and mid 20th century.
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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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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…
