Antarctic dust helps scientists unravel details of past climate change

September 24th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Using satellite lasers, scientists have made the most comprehensive picture of the rapidly thinning glaciers along the coastline of both the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. Researchers from British Antarctic Survey and the University of Bristol describe how analysis of millions of NASA satellite measurements from both of these vast ice sheets shows that the most profound ice loss is a result of glaciers speeding up where they flow into the sea.

September 10th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Scientists, in a new research, have found that about 34 million years ago, Antarctica had more room for ice than previously thought. Scientists from the University of California, Santa Barbara, US, carried out the research.

September 5th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Reports indicate that climate change may affect critical water resources that support prey for 75 migratory bird species in the Great Basin in the US. As climate change either freshens wetlands or drier weather makes them saltier, the distribution and availability of waterbird prey species may impact which waterbirds can use the wetlands and when.

August 29th, 2009 WASHINGTON - In a new research, a team of scientists has determined that the warped shapes of the dust-filled disks where new planets may be forming around other stars, may be due to interstellar wind. The dust-filled disks where new planets may be forming around other stars occasionally take on some difficult-to-understand shapes.

August 25th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A team of scientists has drilled an ice core of altogether 1757.87 m length on the Greenland inland ice within 110 days, which is expected to contain data on climate history of about 38,000 years. This completed the first season of the international drilling project NEEM (North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling) in north-western Greenland.

July 10th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new study has indicated that seals can quickly respond to gain and loss of habitat under climate change. The study was conducted by an international research team, including post-doctorate Dr Mark de Bruyn and collaborators from the US, South Africa and Italy, led by Professor Rus Hoelzel from the School of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Durham University.

June 29th, 2009 Increasing dust speeds melting of mountain snowWASHINGTON — Dust in the wind is rewriting the cycle of life in the mountains. Throughout memory the warmth of spring has begun the mountain snowmelt, bringing life-giving water to greening plants so they can blossom and renew their species.

May 18th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A team of atmospheric chemists has moved closer to the first-ever direct detections of biological particles within ice clouds, which is considered the "holy grail" of climate change science. The team, led by Kimberly Prather and Kerri Pratt of the University of California at San Diego, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, sampled water droplet and ice crystal residues at high speeds while flying through clouds in the skies over Wyoming, US.

May 6th, 2009 WASHINGTON - New Antarctic seabed sonar images have revealed that the extent of ice covering the continent of Antarctica at the end of the last ice age around 10,000 years ago was much larger than it is today, which could help scientists to predict future sea-level rise. Using sonar technology from onboard ships, scientists from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and the German Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) captured the most extensive, continuous set of images of the seafloor around the Amundsen Sea embayment ever taken.

April 22nd, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new research has determined that increased growth in Antarctic sea ice during the past 30 years is a result of changing weather patterns caused by the ozone hole. The research, done by scientists from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and NASA, indicates that while there has been a dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice, Antarctic sea ice has increased by a small amount as a result of the ozone hole delaying the impact of greenhouse gas increases on the climate of the continent.

April 6th, 2009 WASHINGTON - The US will push for more restrictions on tourism to the North and South Poles to protect the regions' natural environment, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday. Opening a nearly two-week summit bringing together the two diplomatic bodies that govern the Arctic and Antarctic, Clinton warned that protecting the region was crucial for reducing global climate change.

March 17th, 2009 WASHINGTON - In a new research, scientists have used detailed satellite data to suggest that the changing climate is affecting not just the penguins at the apex of the food chain in Antarctica, but simultaneously the microscopic life that is the base of the ecosystem. The research was carried out by scientists with the National Science Foundation's (NSF) LTER (Long Term Ecological Research) program.

March 14th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Carbon dioxide released from the Antartic Ocean due to shifting wind patterns may drastically increase global warming, say scientists. Many scientists think that the end of the last ice age was triggered by a change in earth's orbit that caused the northern part of the planet to warm.

March 13th, 2009 WASHINGTON - An international research team has found evidence that some stars in the center of the Milky Way galaxy have both carbon and oxygen in the dust that surrounds them, which sheds new light on the origin of the elements of life. "Scientists have long expected to find carbon-rich stars in our galaxy because we know that significant quantities of carbon must be created in many such stars, but carbon had not previously shown up in the clouds of gas around these stars," said Matthew Bobrowsky, an astrophysicist in the University of Maryland's department of physics.

January 22nd, 2009 WASHINGTON - Much of Antarctica has been warming, not getting any colder, as suspected by scientists studying climate change. The study found that warming in West Antarctica exceeded a tenth of a degree Celsius per decade for the last 50 years and more than offset the cooling in East Antarctica.