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.
-
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…
-
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…
-
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).
-
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…
-
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.
-
NRC Releases Synthesis of Reports on the State of the Polar Regions
04.04.2012
The US National Research Council (NRC) has just released a synthesis of reports from thousands of scientists from 60 countries who participated in research projects during the International Polar Year (IPY) 2007- 2008.
-
CryoSat Validation Mission Shows Blue Ice Region in Antarctica Rising
31.03.2012
As part of its mission to validate the data ESA’s CryoSat satellite delivers, a team of scientists recently took some field measurements in the blue ice region in the Dronning Maud Land in East Antarctica. What the team found is that the elevation of this vast region close to the…
-
Ice Shelves in West Antarctica Being Torn Apart
31.03.2012
A study published in the Journal of Glaciology indicates that the ice shelves of West Antarctica are being “torn apart” as the flow of the glaciers which feed into the ice shelves has been accelerating.
-
Arctic Sea Ice Reaches 2012 Winter Maximum
31.03.2012
Sea ice in the Arctic reached its maximum extent for the winter of 2011-2012 on 18 March, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). Total extent reached 15.24 million km2, the ninth lowest maximum sea ice extent on record.
-
NASA’s Operation IceBridge 2012 Arctic Season Underway
20.03.2012
NASA’s Operation IceBridge to measure sea and land ice at the Poles began its mission for the 2012 Arctic season on 13 March. From now until May, a modified P-3 aircraft will fly daily missions out of Thule and Kangerlussaq in Greenland and will also make a trip to Fairbanks,…
