Polar News and Notes Scientists in the field

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. […]

 Aboard a ship in the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, a tourist from Great Britain spotted a swimming polar bear with a cub on her back. Intrigued by the sight, the tourist got in touch with the Norwegian Polar Institute to ask about the mother bear’s behavior.  
According to an article in the BBC […]

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 […]

When the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its landmark report in 2007, some people wondered if predictions of environmental changes might be too dire or unlikely to be seen in the current generation’s lifetime. This fall, a report compiled from research over the past three years warns us that the pace […]

Did Northern Hemisphere climate shifts in the past affect the climate in the tropics? For geologists who believe past global climate patterns may help predict future patterns, glaciers may prove to hold some answers.
As reported in the September 25, 2009, issue of the journal Science, a study led by Joe Licciardi of the University […]