Until now, images of polar bears have not brought to mind a bear snacking on goose eggs. That may change with the reporting of Robert Rockwell, a research associate in ornithology at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), and graduate student Linda Gormezano in the magazine Polar Biology and other researchers’ observations.
While the polar […]

What was the climate like when the earth was warmer than it is today? To find the answer, researchers in a group called Pliocene Research, Interpretation and Synoptic Mapping (PRISM) are trying to reconstruct a warm period that existed 3 million years ago.
Led by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), scientists are examining fossils from the […]

The European Space Agency reports new rifts on the Wilkins Ice Sheet, which is connected to two islands by a strip of ice. The rifts could cause the largest ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula to destroy the strip, or bridge, of ice that has been preventing the shelf from breaking away.  
Wilkins Ice Sheet, […]

Researchers led by Richard Alley of Pennsylvania State University believe they have a way of predicting how fast “calving events” will occur on an ice shelf. Their model, briefly described in a press release from the university and reported in the November 28 issue of Science, will prove helpful as more “calves,” or icebergs, are […]

December 4 will be the seventh International Polar Day and the focus is on modern-day research taking place at both poles. With the theme Above the Polar Regions, background information and activities will feature polar meteorology, atmospheric sciences, astronomy, and polar observations from space.
Teachers and others are invited to use resources from the Above the […]

The World Conference on Marine Biodiversity, meeting in Valencia, Spain, in mid-November, received the fourth report on the Census of Marine Life, which is being compiled by 2,000 scientists from 82 nations. It will be officially released in October 2010.
This report revealed some amazing new findings about life in the ocean depths. In a […]

Iceland has 109 outlet glaciers, 73 mountain glaciers, five valley glaciers and 21 surge-type glaciers, plus 55 cirque glaciers, ice caps and snow patches—and all have been counted and named. In a country about the size of the state of Virginia, residents have been observing and documenting their wealth of glaciers for centuries.
The glaciers’ […]

The dangers of climate change to Arctic mammals, such as polar bears and seals, have been studied and publicized widely. Sea birds seem to have received less attention. For one species, the ivory gull, the reason may be the sheer inaccessibility to its habitat — sea ice and the high cliffs of nunataks (hills or […]

Millions of southern Californians are expected to take part in the largest earthquake drill in U.S. history at 10 a.m. on November 13.
The Great Southern California ShakeOut drill is based on a magnitude 7.8 earthquake on the southern San Andreas Fault.
Not only is the drill unique in its size but it is also […]

Saying the world is in an “extinction crisis,” the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) released its 2008 Red List of Threatened Species during a meeting in Barcelona, Spain, October 5-14.
 A new study to assess the world’s mammals shows at least 1,141 of the 5,487 wild mammal species, or almost one in four, […]