PRESS RELEASE Alfred-Wegener-Institut for Polar- und Meeresforschung in der Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft Institute for Polar and Marine Research Communications Dept. Postfach 12 01 61, 27515 Bremerhaven/Germany Tel. ++49 471 4831-2008, Fax ++49 471 4831-1389 email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Methane sources over the last 30,000 years New insights into natural changes in atmospheric methane concentrations Bremerhaven, April 17, 2008. Ice cores are essential for climate research, because they represent the only archive which allows direct measurements of atmospheric composition and greenhouse gas concentrations in the past. Using novel isotopic studies, scientists from the European Project for Ice Coring In Antarctica (EPICA) w...

PRESS RELEASE Alfred-Wegener-Institut für Polar- und Meeresforschung in der Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft Institute for Polar and Marine Research Communications Dept. Postfach 12 01 61, 27515 Bremerhaven/Germany Tel. ++49 471 4831-1376, Fax ++49 471 4831-1389 email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it Seven months on a drifting ice floe Drift expedition NP 35 has produced unique data about the hibernal atmosphere above the central Arctic Bremerhaven, April 14, 2008 For the first time, a German has taken part in a Russian drift expedition and has explored the atmosphere above the central Arctic during the polar night. Jürgen Graeser, a member of the Potsdam Research Unit of the Alfred-Wegener-Institute for Polar and M...

NOAA Probes Arctic Pollution For Global Warming Clues NOAA — April 7 — NOAA scientists are now flying through springtime Arctic pollution to find out why the region is warming - and summertime sea ice is melting - faster than predicted. Some 35 NOAA researchers are gathering with government and university colleagues in Fairbanks, Alaska, to conduct the study through April 23. Called ARCPAC (Aerosol, Radiation, and Cloud Processes affecting Arctic Climate Change), the project is a NOAA contribution to International Polar Year 2008. Ringed seals key to polar bears' fate: researchers Winnipeg Free Press — Apr...

NOAA Probes Arctic Pollution For Global Warming Clues NOAA — April 7 — NOAA scientists are now flying through springtime Arctic pollution to find out why the region is warming - and summertime sea ice is melting - faster than predicted. Some 35 NOAA researchers are gathering with government and university colleagues in Fairbanks, Alaska, to conduct the study through April 23. Called ARCPAC (Aerosol, Radiation, and Cloud Processes affecting Arctic Climate Change), the project is a NOAA contribution to International Polar Year 2008. Ringed seals key to polar bears' fate: researchers Winnipeg Free Press — Apr...

On Tuesday, April 8, middle- and high-school students from Fairbanks, Shageluk and Wasilla, Alaska, will join with students from the other end of the globe, in Ushuaia, Argentina, in a live two-hour videoconference that is part of International Polar Year (IPY) activities at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF). The students will respond to a focus question about the important seasonal indicators in their area (such as budburst, leaves changing colors, or river/lake freeze-up or break-up), and how those indicators may be impacted by climate change. They will then discuss their answers with each other and with several arctic and antarctic scientists who will be on hand. This videoconference, similar to one that was held a year ago on the UAF campus, is part of an Internat...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 4, 2008 Children near both poles will have a chance to talk to each other and scientists about changes they are seeing in their own environments and how people are adapting to those changes during an International Polar Year pole-to-pole videoconference Tuesday, April 8, at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Through the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment program, known as GLOBE, students in Fairbanks, Shageluk and Wasilla, Alaska will exchange their research ideas and interact with students from Ushuaia, Argentina, as well as with scientists from Alaska, Colorado and Argentina. The exchange is part of the IPY GLOBE Seasons and Biomes project, which trains K-12 teachers and students ...

River delta's rise puts Arctic's future in flux VANCOUVER, April 4, 2008 Globe and Mail In the Mackenzie River Delta, where there are about 45,000 lakes separated by thin arms of land, researchers have found that global warming is causing water-level increases three times greater than expected. The study, Effects of Global Change on Canada's Mackenzie River Delta, is part of an International Polar Year investigation into changes in Arctic freshwater systems. Experimenting with scientific fun Queens University Journal Bottles of strangely named ch...

Antarctica receives almost 50,000 visitors a year, if you count both those who disembark and those who sail or over fly the continent without landing. Is it now for the Antarctic Treaty or the governments involved to regulate Antarctic Tourism? Should we start talking about quotas and/or other measures to protect the most pristine region in the world? Photographer, cruise manager and guide Juan Kratzmaier summarizes a conference talk he gave on the topic at the Institute of Marine Sciences in Barcelona for the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) in ...

SciencePoles recently interviewed Dr Cynan Ellis Evans of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) on the subject of Antarctic sub-glacial lakes: Large bodies of water that have accumulated beneath the vast ice sheet of Antarctica. In his interview, Dr Ellis Evans answers questions about how these lakes formed, how they are being studies, and what their significance is for Polar researchers including glaciologists, geologists, biologists, and paleo-climatologists. In addition, he sheds light on the nature of the international effort to research these lakes, and addresses more contentio...

A number of research projects during the current International Polar Year are using the traditional knowledge of the indigenous peoples of the Arctic as well as sociological studies of these societies in conjunction with research in the natural sciences on climate variability and change. With climate change rapidly altering the face of the Arctic, it is particularly important to document indigenous knowledge while it is still available. The inherent knowledge of snow and snow conditions that reindeer herding communities have accumulated over the centuries can be of great value to researchers studying snow and ice conditions in these regions. In the IPY EALÁT project (n°399), researchers are examining reindeer herding societies and how they are coping with climate change wh...