Polar News and Notes Antarctica

From now until the end of November, a DC-8 aircraft will make 17 low-level flights over West Antarctica to measure the thinning of the ice sheet. A project of NASA and known as Operation ICE Bridge, the flights carry nearly two dozen scientists and their airborne lab.
At 157-feet long, the DC-8 is too big […]

News from the polar regions in October 2009 included a NASA air campaign to monitor the Antarctic ice sheets and coastal sea ice, continued concerns over the high levels of global carbon dioxide and climate change, and engineering technology to fight erosion. Missed these stories the first time around? Read on!
A laser technique used successfully […]

Life in the Antarctic depends on the lowest members of the global food chain - krill. This would be reason enough for scientists to investigate the comings and goings of the small crustaceans. But researchers also wanted to know why trillions of krill formed swarms so vast the superswarms can be seen from the air. […]

In September, Rochester, Minnesota, opened a new elementary school named to honor George Washington Gibbs Jr. (1916-2000), for his pre-World War II service in Antarctica as well as his civil rights leadership in Rochester.
Also in September, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names confirmed a place name in Antarctica for Gibbs, the first black explorer […]

Ice cores drilled from Antarctica have revealed a brief but remarkably warm period in the continent’s history. Scientists are now trying to figure out what caused the warm spell and how knowing about it will affect current climate change modeling.
The clue revealed in the ice core was a two-meter ( 6.5 feet) layer of […]