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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Warming Arctic Helps Archeologists Make Extraordinary Find
28.04.2010
Scientists have found artifacts dating back to 2,400 years ago in the Mackenzie Mountains in Canada’s Northwest Territories. The ancient hunting tools that had been frozen in patches of ice formed through the accumulation of snowfall over the years, which until recently remained frozen throughout the entire year.
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NASA’s Operation Ice Bridge Offers Opportunity for CryoSat-2 Data Verification
27.04.2010
The DC-8 aircraft being used in NASA’s Operation Ice Bridge project (NASA’s six-year field campaign to bridge the gap between ICESat-I and ICSat-II missions) flew directly under CryoSat-2's orbital path as part of a campaign to validate CryoSat-2’s measurements of the ice. As both projects are currently working in the…
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NOAA: March 2010 Hottest March on Record
21.04.2010
Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) monthly National Climatic Data Center analysis, which is based on records going back to 1880, shows March 2010 to be hottest March on record. Analysis suggests the record is due to a combined global land and ocean surface temperature rise. Even…
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New ANDRILL Core Suggest More Dynamic Antarctic History than Previously Thought
20.04.2010
While Arctic se ice extent has shrunk to record lows several times since 2005 only to rebound to 95% of its long-term average extent this winter, ice loss in the Antarctic has been much less dramatic. Until recently scientists have thought that the Antarctic Ice Sheet has been resistant to…
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Cryosat-2 Delivers First Data
14.04.2010
The European Space Agency (ESA) made a significant achievement this week by successfully sending its third satellite into orbit under its Earth Observation programme. Launched successfully on 8 April, the satellite will provide data on the variations in Earth’s ice cover.
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50 Years of Research Shows Important Devon Island Ice Loss
13.04.2010
A paper recently published in the journal Arctic reports that between 1961 and 1985, the ice cap on Devon Island in the Canadian High Arctic had been growing and shrinking in size annually before seeing a steadier decline in ice volume and area since 1985. The suspected reasons behind the…
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Deepest Core from Antarctic Peninsula Could Contain Ice from last Ice Age
13.04.2010
A new ice core recently retrieved from the Antarctic Peninsula has given scientists from Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio hope of finding ice samples dating back to the last ice age. If this is the case, the 445.6-metre ice core - the deepest ever drilled on the peninsula -…
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ESA’s CryoSat-2 Successfully Launched
09.04.2010
CryoSat-2 was successfully launched on April 8th, 2010 at 15:57 CEST (13:57 UTC) on a Dnepr rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The satellite, which replaces the original CryoSat, will be measuring variations in ice thickness of the ice sheets covering Antarctica and Greenland as well as variations in…
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Traditional Inuit Forecasting Sharpens Scientific Arctic Weather Insights
09.04.2010
The Inuit have long relied upon their indigenous forecasting skills to determine when a good time to go on a hunt is, but now they are finding that their centuries-old knowledge is no longer quite as useful. As climate change has begun to alter the weather of the Arctic, the…
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NASA’s ENDURANCE Explores Lake Bonney in Antarctica
09.04.2010
In an effort to develop technology fitted for the search of extraterrestrial life in the oceans beneath the surface of Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, NASA-funded scientists and engineers have taken a significant step forward in preparing for such a mission as ENDURANCE (Environmentally Non-Disturbing Under-Ice Robotic Antarctic Explorer) finished…
