Polar News and Notes Ezine Departments

According to news from the European Space Agency, the Wilkins Ice Shelf is “hanging by its last thread” to the  Antarctic Peninsula The researchers are studying satellite images that show continuing disintegration of the shelf and a fracture in the ice bridge connecting the shelf to land. The bridge helps stabilize the ice shelf, and […]

A volcano located on Umnak Island in the western Aleutians Islands erupted on Saturday, July 12, 2008, with little warning to the ranch family who shares the island or the Alaska Volcano Observatory, which monitors the state’s hazardous volcanoes.
The crater of the Okmok Volcano is about six miles wide and 1,600 feet deep. Seismologists maintain […]

In June 2008, Miami, Florida, artist Xavier Cortada traveled to the North Pole with sound artist Juan Carlos Espinosa to create paintings using Arctic water and install eco-art at 90 degrees North.
Cortada made a similar art trek to the South Pole in January 2007 as a recipient of an Antarctic Artists and Writers Program residency […]

In June 1988, a government scientist named James E. Hansen told a Senate committee that the greenhouse effect was changing the climate. “We have already reached the point where the greenhouse effect is important,” he said.
It is now generally agreed that Hansen’s presentation to the committee alerted other scientists, policymakers, and the general public to […]

The same U.S. House committee that heard testimony from climate scientist James Hansen on June 23, the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, held a joint hearing the following Wednesday with the Intelligence Community Management (ICM) Subcommittee to discuss the results of the first-ever U.S. Government analysis of the security threats posed […]

Have you ever felt confused by the complexity of the polar regions? Or realized that your knowledge just scratches the surface of these far-off places? If you have, you are certainly in good company. All of us - especially the project staff at Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears - have been confronted with our lack of understanding […]

This July, a team of four scientists, a writer and a photographer from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the University of Washington will return to Greenland for their third year of investigating glacial lakes, which form atop the ice sheet each spring and summer. The expedition runs from July 7 to 24.
From their tents […]

News from the polar regions in June includes speculation on the future of the Arctic sea ice and permafrost, unexpected behavior of an Antarctic ice stream, and new technology designed to assist in polar research. Missed these stories the first time? Read on!
In May, we reported on an international, three-week expedition designed to validate the […]

Want to learn about polar research? Check out the In the Field: Scientists at Work department in Issue 4 of Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears - Weather and Climate: From Home to the Poles!
In this issue:
Read about current news from polar researchers.
Read how a surprising discovery led to a better understanding of Earth’s climate 5,000 years […]

This September in a two-hour broadcast titled Earth 2100, ABC News will bring scientists, historians, economists, and viewers worldwide together to predict what the planet will be like by the next century. The news organization is inviting Internet viewers now to create short videos about what life will be like if we do nothing about […]