Polar News and Notes Polar News & Notes

The U.S. Department of Education’s Teacher-to-Teacher Initiative has opened registration for its free summer workshops. The workshops will be held across the country starting June 18 and will target specific grade levels and content areas. Workshops for summer 2008 include:

Denver, Colorado (United States Mint) - June 18-19, 2008
Nashua, New Hampshire (Federal Aviation Administration) - June […]

In an opinion piece published in the May issue of Australasian Science, a climate scientist urges his fellow researchers to stand up to those who deny climate change and do more to explain good science to the public. Barry Brook, director of the Research Institute for Climate Change and Sustainability, at the University of Adelaide, […]

Climate scientists are leaving few stones unturned as they look for ways to offset global warming, including geoengineering–the deliberate modification of the environment on a large scale. One widely discussed geoengineering idea for cooling the planet has recently been judged to have some potentially harmful side effects.  
The idea was to regularly inject large amounts […]

A new month brings a new issue of the Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears cyberzine! The online magazine is written for elementary teachers to help develop their content knowledge of the polar regions and use best practices in integrating science and literacy instruction. Our second issue is called “Polar Patterns: Day, Night, and Seasons” and […]

News from the polar regions in April 2008 included research into pollution’s role in Arctic climate change, documentation of a massive and rapid drainingof a glacial lake in Greenland, and surprising results from the summer Antarctic field season. Missed these stories the first time? Read on!
Indigenous people, who have the smallest ecological footprint on Earth, […]

The jet streams in both hemispheres have risen in altitude and shifted toward the poles over the past two decades. The movement can have significant impact on weather around the globe if it continues, according to research published in the April 18 Geophysical Research Letters.
While the jet streams twist and turn as they move […]

Meet Pierre 
A recent news article profiled Pierre, a 25 year-old African penguin at the Academy of Sciences. Biologists became concerned when Pierre, who was going bald, refused to swim in the penguin tank and shivered on the sidelines instead. Unlike polar bears, seals, and other marine mammals, penguins do not have an insulating layer of […]

There’s evidence of global warming in the Arctic region aplenty, and now you can add evidence that illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing there has become an international criminal activity.
A report, Illegal Fishing in Arctic Waters, from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) shows that cod valued at $350 million was illegally caught in the Barents […]

During one week in May, students around the world will be gathering data that shows how proximity to the equator affects average daily temperature and hours of sunlight. In an Internet-based project called The Global Sun Temperature Project, students will determine their latitude and longitude coordinates, measure and record temperature and minutes of daylight, calculate […]

Three of the Web Seminars scheduled by the National Science Teachers Association in May will offer teachers at all grade levels an opportunity to enrich their teaching about the polar regions. Each seminar is presented at 6:30 p.m. on its scheduled date and lasts for 90 minutes. Participation is free.
Presenters for the two-part seminars on […]