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.

Antarctic Research Finds New Mechanism for Nitrous Oxide Production

27.04.2010

New research appearing in the journal Nature Geoscience reports that biogeochemists from the University of Georgia have been able to find a previously unreported chemical mechanism for the production of nitrous oxide (N2O), a potent greenhouse gas. The discovery, which they made in the saltiest body of water on earth…
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…
New Techniques Reconstruct Gondwana Break-Up

13.04.2010

Scientists have made new discoveries about the break-up of Gondwana, the supercontinent made up of present-day Antarctica, Australia and India which existed around 500 million years ago in the Southern Hemisphere. While in Antarctica, the team of scientists used three-dimensional imaging to find evidence of how the suprcontinent broke apart.
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…
Thawing Permafrost Also Releasing Nitrous Oxide into Atmosphere

07.04.2010

Nitrous oxide (N2O), which gets into the atmosphere from fertilizers used in agriculture or the use of fossil fuels, had been believed that while carbon dioxide and methane were released as permafrost melted, nitrous oxide remained in the permafrost. However according to a new study, the release of the powerful…
Seafloor Sediment Cores from Wilkes Land Offer Insight into Past and Future Climates

19.02.2010

From onboard the JOIDES Resolution, a ship operated by the International Ocean Drilling Program (IODP), morethan 30 researchers from institutions including Stanford University have been drilling into the seafloor to collect sediments as old as 50 million years in an attempt to find clues about Earth's past climate.
Limits of Permafrost in Northern Canada Pushed Back over 130 km in last 50 Years

18.02.2010

Over the course of the past 50 years, the limits of permafrost in the James Bay region of Canada have moved northwards by 130 kilometers, according to researchers from the Université Laval. A study, published in the scientific journal Permafrost and Periglacial Processes, their research suggests that permafrost in the…
Canada and US to Map Arctic Seabed to Make Territorial Claims

15.02.2010

With predictions of an ice-free Arctic by 2030, Arctic countries such as Canada, the United States, Russia, Denmark and Norway have mounted studies with the hope to expand their seabed territory. An estimated 22% of the world’s untapped natural oil, natural gas and mineral resources can be found in the…
Arctic Methane Emissions Reaching Record Levels

19.01.2010

On the heels of a string of reports on the methane emissions from the Arctic permafrost, a new study published in Science shows a massive spike in the amount of methane seeping from Arctic permafrost as it melts. As the study shows, methane emissions have risen by almost one-third in…
Invading Trees Likely to Cause Increased Warming in the Arctic

13.01.2010

Trees seem to be slowly moving northward as the tundra in the Arctic melts. According to a study from University of California Berkley scientists published in the online Early Edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the northward expansion of the treeline (the northernmost point at…