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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Antarctic Marine Environment Found to Have High Levels of Mercury
09.01.2012
Seabirds in the Southern Ocean have mercury levels four times that of seabirds found elsewhere on the planet, according to research conducted by a team of French and Australian oceanographers led by Daniel Cossa from the French Institute of Recherche for the Exploitation of the Sea (IFREMER).
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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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Unique New Species Discovered around Antarctic Hydrothermal Vents
04.01.2012
Several species new to science have been discovered inhabiting areas around deep-sea hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor along the East Scotia Ridge between the southern tip of South America and the Antarctic Peninsula. While hydrothermal vents have been studied in other parts of the world’s oceans, this is the…
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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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Investigating Adaptation of Antarctic Worms to Warming Oceans
23.12.2011
University of Delaware researchers are currently studying how tiny worms living in the freezing sea off the coast of Antarctica have adapted to such an extreme environment as well as how they might survive as the ocean worms. Adam Marsh and colleagues from the University of Delaware’s College of Earth,…
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New Herbivorous Dinosaur Remains Discovered in Antarctica
22.12.2011
With their recent discovery of advanced titanosaur remains in Antarctica, Dr. Ignacio Alejandro Cerda and his colleagues from the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) in Buenos Aires, Argentina have been able to show that this particular variety of dinosaurs were able to achieve global distribution by at…
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Inferring Past Krill Populations from Antarctic Fur Seal Hairs
05.12.2011
A team of scientists from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), Utah State University, the Institute of Oceanology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Brooklyn College have inferred changes in krill numbers by analyzing the shift in a stable Nitrogen-15 isotope (δ15N) marker found in Antarctic…
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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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Climate Change Stunting Growth of 100-Year-Old Moss Shoots in Antarctica
28.11.2011
In a paper to be published in January in the journal Global Change Biology, a team of scientists from the University of Wollongong (UOW) in conjunction with nuclear scientists from the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization (ANSTO) suggests that mosses, the dominant plants in Antarctica, have been affected by current climate change.…
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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…
