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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Calving Events in Antarctica Linked to Tōhoku Tsunami
12.08.2011
A group of scientists from NASA’s Goddard Space flight Center, Northwestern University and the University of Chicago have been able to link the Tōhoku Earthquake in March 2011 and subsequent tsunami it generated to the calving of icebergs off of the Sulzberger Ice Shelf in Antarctica.
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Study of Anaktuvuk River Fire Highlights Major Impacts of Tundra Fires on Carbon Storage
31.07.2011
In 2007, the Anaktuvuk River Fire in Alaska – the largest ever recorded tundra fire in the Arctic – burned 1039 km² and released over 2.3 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere. A study of the region affected by the fire conducted by resarchers at the University of Alaska…
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British Antarctic Survey Discovers New Antarctic Volcanoes
13.07.2011
Using sea-floor mapping instruments aboard the RSS James Clark Ross, scientists from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) discovered 27 previously unknown volcanoes, 12 of which are underwater. Studying these underwater volcanoes not only gives scientists cues about the development of our planet, but also about natural events like tsunamis that…
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Barrier Islands Disappearing as Arctic Thaws
16.06.2011
A survey recently published in the Journal of Coastal Research, has determined that there are 2,149 barrier islands around the world, spanning a total of 20,783 km of coastline. Seventy-four percent of these islands are found in the northern hemisphere, where two thirds of the world’s land mass lies, and…
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Climate Change’s Ecological Impact on the Mackenzie Delta Region
18.05.2011
A Canadian multidisciplinary research team has discovered new evidence of the destructive impact of global climate change on North America’s largest Arctic delta, the Mackenzie Delta in Canada’s Northwest Territorries.
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Climate Change Might Be Too Much for Siberia’s Boreal Forests
30.04.2011
According to a study recently published in the Environmental Research Letters by researchers from Nagoya University in Japan, the larch trees dominating the boreal forest of Siberia might not survive even the most optimistic climate change scenario of a 4°C increase in summer temperature in Siberia by the year 2100.…
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Arctic Coasts Losing Shoreline
19.04.2011
According to a collaborative study conducted by a consortium of more than 30 scientists from 10 countries, the retreat of the Arctic coastline as a consequence of climate change amounts to half a metre per year on average.
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Silver Nanoparticles Highly Toxic to Vulnerable Arctic Ecosystems
08.04.2011
Researchers from Queen’s University in Canada recently discovered that some silver nanoparticles that are present in many manufactured products, including antibacterial agents, could have extremely damaging effects on microbial ecosystems in the Arctic.
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Honshu Earthquake Causes Antarctic Ice Stream to Speed Up
18.03.2011
The earthquakes that struck Japan on March 11th caused the Whillans Ice Stream in West Antarctica to momentarily speed up, University of California, Santa Cruz scientists reported in the New Scientist. The ice stream, which drains ice from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet into the Ross Ice Shelf, has been…
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Thawing Permafrost Will Likely Speed up Global Warming by 2200
21.02.2011
According to a new study recently published in Tellus B, the Earth could lose two-thirds of its permafrost by 2200, releasing incredible quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Not only will this release have a significant impact on the climate, scientists say, but it will influence international climate change…
