Polar Regions News

Andres Peña Castro and his team didn’t set out to track sea ice. Their original plan was to quantify the interactions between ocean, earth and atmosphere to be able to…

The south polar region long seemed resistant to climate change, but as warming intensifies, impacts are being identified across the region. While signs of an irreversible tipping point are lacking, Antarctic changes will likely affect the rest of the world.

New research finds that a record Arctic sea ice melt season in 2007 initiated a “regime shift” to thinner, more transient ice that may be “irreversible”; another study shows that atmospheric rivers from the south are warming the Arctic in winter.

Discussions about the Greenland ice sheet often focus on what it’s losing. But from around the edges of the rapidly melting Greenland ice sheet, a global commodity is being created.…

Sea ice extent didn’t reach record lows this summer, but air temps over Greenland and ocean temps in some Arctic seas were extraordinarily high. Polar warming also likely continues influencing global extreme weather events, scientists say.

Arctic sea ice extent continued its trending decline in winter 2022, while the Antarctic saw a record low summer minimum extent. Both regions also saw extraordinarily high temperatures for this time of year.

The crew of the M/V Arctic Sunrise, an icebreaker vessel owned by Greenpeace, were sailing through Antarctica’s Weddell Sea this month when they saw something they didn’t expect. “One of…

Though September sea ice extent appeared to offer a short-term recovery this fall, “that’s not the full story,” says one Arctic scientist, with low ice concentration seen in 2021, and lack of multiyear ice setting a new record.

Researchers are seeking to pinpoint climate change “tipping points,” but defining what that means exactly, when it will come, and what makes it happen, is unimaginably difficult when faced with the chaotic complexities of a vast Earth biome.

Sea ice fell to its lowest extent on record for this time of year, while new studies find Arctic coastal ice may be receding 70-110% faster than thought, winter ice is failing to regrow fully, and last multi-year ice refuge is under assault.

Polar phytoplankton, fish, seabirds and mammals are increasingly threatened by global warming, which is destabilizing Arctic ecosystems, even as southern species move northward — will the imbalanced biome collapse?

New research finds that ice in both polar regions, and especially sea ice, is disappearing at a quickening rate, while in the Arctic the last stronghold of multiyear ice is under assault from warming.

The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), a governing body of 25 member states and the European Union, missed an opportunity to establish a network of…

Upon reaching 2 degrees Celsius of warming, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet won’t regrow until temperatures are at least 1 degree cooler than they were before the Industrial Revolution, say scientists.

The Arctic is setting records for low sea ice extent for this time of year, with the 2020 refreeze now 500,000+ square kilometers behind a record set in 2019 — a sign the region may be entering a new climate regime.

As a child, Rodolfo Werner used to dream about Antarctica — that vast, white continent with no fixed human population, and surrounded by icy seas teeming with krill, whales and…

2020 didn’t eclipse all-time record-holder 2012, but it came pretty close; also, the Arctic’s growing heat is likely intensifying Asia’s extreme weather, while waters just beneath the ice are getting increasingly warm.

Temps as high as 100 degrees Fahrenheit in Siberia have triggered record Arctic sea ice melt, raging wildfires, permafrost thaw, and an Arctic oil spill.

April and May saw record intense Arctic heat. Now some scientists are asking whether an absence of industrial sulfate aerosol pollutants, which reflect solar energy, could be the cause.

In 1998, Douglas Clark witnessed Manitoba’s second recorded grizzly bear (Ursus arctos horribilis) sighting of the century. Then a warden in Canada’s Wapusk National Park, he remembers swooping down near…

Baby krill living around Antarctica are struggling to cope with rising sea temperatures, new research suggests. The study, published online Jan. 21 in the journal Nature Climate Change, shows that…

1. The race is on to map the seafloor Is it true that we have explored the moon and Mars more thoroughly than the bottom of the ocean? Embarrassingly, yes.…

In a counterintuitive surprise, a new study finds that fish species evolve more than twice as rapidly at the poles than in the tropics. The reason why isn’t currently known.

To some, watching sea ice melt — each floe dissolving slowly away into the Arctic Ocean — might seem the cold-weather equivalent of watching paint dry. But for the roughly…

Picture the blue whale, the largest known animal ever to have lived. This endangered mammal can grow up to 30 metres (about 98 feet) and weigh 173 tonnes; it has…

Winters in the Arctic are long, cold and dark. Nights can last for many days — sometimes even months — plunging some areas into long periods of unbroken darkness.  While…

Chukotkan dancers. Subsistence hunting will be increasingly difficult for the Inuit who depend on marine mammals in the Arctic to provide them with food and materials for clothing. Photo by:…

Patagonian toothfish, often sold as Chilean seabass. Photo by: U.S. FDA. For the first time, marine conservation group, Sea Shepherd, is employing their controversial methods to protect Antarctic and Patagonian…

Steven Amstrup will be speaking at the Wildlife Conservation Network Expo in San Francisco on October 11th, 2014. In 1773, an expedition headed by Constantine John Phipps, the Second Baron…

Yesterday, the European Parliament passed a resolution supporting the creation of an Arctic Sanctuary covering the vast high Arctic around the North Pole, giving official status to an idea that…