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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Analysis of Greenland Ice Sheet’s Dynamics Indicates Worst-Case Melt Scenario Unlikely
07.05.2012
A new study conducted by a team of researchers from the University of Washington and Ohio State University has been able to give a more comprehensive analysis of the ice dynamics of the Greenland Ice Sheet’s glaciers.
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Sea Ice Loss Forcing Polar Bears to Swim Longer Distances, Says USGS Study
03.05.2012
With Arctic sea ice on the decline, polar bears must swim nonstop for hundreds of kilometres in order to find food, according to a USGS study published in the Canadian Journal of Zoology.
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Arctic Sea Ice Loss Strongly Linked to Rise in Greenhouse Gasses
03.05.2012
A new study conducted by scientists from the Max Plank Institute for Meteorology in Germany shows a strong, physically plausible correlation between rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and diminishing sea ice in the Arctic.
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Ikaite Crystals Show Antarctica Was Affected by Recent Climate Fluctuations
03.05.2012
A new method of reconstructing past climates - which uses water locked inside ikaite crystals in ocean seabed sediment - indicates that the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and the subsequent Little Ice Age (LIA) may have affected areas as far south as the Antarctic Peninsula.
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Warm Ocean Water Melting Antarctic Ice Shelves from Below
26.04.2012
Results of a new multinational study published in Nature show that warming ocean water making itw way under ice shelves in Antarctica is a major cause of ice loss on the continent. Carried out by researchers from the British Antarctic Survey, Utrecht University, the University of California San Diego and…
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CryoSat-2 Produces First Map of Arctic Sea Ice Changes Throughout Winter
26.04.2012
Scientists have made the first map showing changes in the thickness of Arctic sea ice over the course of the boreal (northern) winter of 2010-2011 using data from CryoSat-2, a European Space Agency (ESA) satellite launched in April 2010 designed to track sea and land ice thickness changes at the…
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Surface Lake Melt in Greenland Causing Ice Sheet to “Slip Away”
25.04.2012
According to results of a study by a team of researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder, the Greenland Ice Sheet is slipping into the ocean at a faster rate due to “catastrophic lake drainages” – when huge amounts of meltwater from surface lakes on top of the ice…
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Newly Discovered Methane Source in the Arctic: Ocean Surface Waters
24.04.2012
According to a multi-institutional study published in Nature Geoscience, areas in the Arctic Ocean appear to be emitting the potent greenhouse gas methane (CH4). As a greenhouse gas, methane is 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide (CO2).
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Study Shows Increase in Atmospheric CO2 Helped End Last Ice Age
10.04.2012
Scientists have been able to reconstruct past temperatures using proxy methods such as reading ice cores, tree rings and sediment cores from the bottom of lakes and oceans. They have also been able to reconstruct past levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere from air bubbles…
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Thawing Permafrost Attributed to Acute Global Warming in Past
10.04.2012
An international study conducted by researchers from the US, Italy and the UK published in Nature has shown that past thawing of permafrost on Earth and the carbon that was released from it into the atmosphere led to a runaway warming effect.
