News from the polar regions during December 2008 included studies of methane and its role in climate change, new information about the role of polar bears and snowy owls in the Arctic ecosystem, trouble for the Wilkins Ice Shelf and an Antarctic cruise ship, and an astonishing fact about Antarctica’s biological diversity. Missed these stories […]

The “hope” that developing countries would install technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as they became wealthier is not backed up by evidence so far. A study by researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the University of Colorado warns that continuing economic and technological disparities will make it more difficult than […]

The forecasts of continuing climate change have not prompted public or private organizations to adapt to the dangers posed by higher temperatures, says Robert Repetto, author of The Climate Crisis and the Adaptation Myth and formerly a professor in the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
The reasons for failure to adapt can be […]

On January 15 and 16, the International Year of Astronomy will be launched with an opening ceremony at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Headquarters in Paris, France.
One of the goals of the year-long program is to “increase scientific awareness among the general public through the communication of scientific results in […]

The world’s largest neutrino telescope is being constructed on and under Antarctica ice. Known as IceCube, the telescope consists of strings of 60 optical detectors, each string more than half a mile long and frozen in the ice. Atop each string is a pair of 600 gallon tanks filled with clear ice and containing two […]

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 […]

Tonight at 7pm EST we’re having an online chat in the TappedIn online learning community - http://tappedin.org. We’ll be working our way through the December 2008 issue of the Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears online magazine. If you can’t join us, you can still take “our tour” below. We meet the first Thursday of each […]

Jessica Fries-Gaither will present “Integrating Informational Text and Science Through the Polar Regions” on Wednesday, December 10, 2008 at the International Reading Association’s Regional Conference in Nashville, TN. The presentation be be held at 9 a.m. in room 102 of the Nashville Convention Center. We hope you’ll be able to attend!
If you can’t attend the […]

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, […]