Polar News and Notes Antarctica

News from the polar regions during September included many applications of satellite technology, ecological impacts of climate change, and calls for continued research in the Arctic. Missed these stories the first time? Read on!
1999 to 2008 was the warmest decade in the Arctic in two millennia, notes a new study. This is a reversal of […]

When scientists from the United Kingdom and the United States set out to find evidence of a link between carbon dioxide levels and the formation of ice caps in Antarctica some 34 million years ago, they went to a remote village in Tanzania. .They and other scientists believed there might be fossil evidence to such […]

An Antarctic species whose response to climate warming has been documented in recent decades gives researchers cause for concern today. As sea ice shrinks, the emperor penguin colony on Terre Adelie could decline from about 3,000 breeding pairs to 400 by the end of the century.
One colony around the French research station in Terre Adelie […]

The U.S. Air Force has begun flying people and supplies to McMurdo Station, Antarctica, in preparation for the 2009-10 summer field season, which begins this month. The weeklong period of flights between Christchurch, New Zealand, and the continent is dubbed Winfly, short for winter fly-in. It will bring some 350 new people to the station, […]

Looking for a good place to build a space observatory, U.S. and Australian astronomers combined data from satellites, ground stations, and climate models. Soon they found what they call “the coldest, driest, calmest place on Earth.” It is likely they could also call it a place where no living thing has ever been. 
 The prized site […]