London: Antarctic summer ice melt is now occurring 10 times faster than it did 600 years ago, with ice loss speeding up the most since mid 20th Century, new research has warned. The 1000-year Antarctic Peninsula climate reconstruction published in the journal Nature Geoscience, shows that summer ice melting has intensified almost 10-fold, and mostly since the mid 20th Century.
Summer ice melt affects the stability of Antarctic ice shelves and glaciers. In 2008, a UK-French science team drilled a 364-metre long ice core from James Ross Island, near the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, to measure past temperatures in the area. They discovered that this ice core could also give a unique and unexpected insight into ice melt in the region.
Visible layers in the ice core indicated periods when summer snow on the ice cap thawed and then refroze. By measuring the thickness of these melt layers the scientists were able to examine how the history of melting compared with changes in temperature at the ice core site over the last 1,000 years.
"We found that the coolest conditions on the Antarctic Peninsula and the lowest amount of summer melt occurred around 600 years ago," said lead author Dr Nerilie Abram of The Australian National University and British Antarctic Survey (BAS). "At that time temperatures were around 1.6 degrees Celsius lower than those recorded in the late 20th Century and the amount of annual snowfall that melted and refroze was about 0.5 per cent.
02:22 PM, Apr 15, 2013
The South Pole is turning into a waste dump, with leftovers from experimental set-ups slowly decomposing. Mounds of rubbish, discarded oil cans, car batteries and some dangerous chemicals litter the South Pole, according to a report. ...
12:07 PM, Feb 10, 2013
London: Scientists have discovered that unlike the dramatic losses in the Arctic, the Antarctic sea ice cover has increased under the effects of climate change. The first direct evidence that marked changes to Antarctic sea ice drift occurring over the last 20 years in response to changing winds has been explained by scientists from NERC's British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena California. Maps created by...
05:38 PM, Nov 12, 2012
New Delhi: Google is surfing new places in the remote northern outposts of the Canada's Arctic region with its mapping device, the search engine said in a statement Thursday. "Search for Cambridge Bay on Google maps and you will fly to a tiny hamlet located deep in the Kitikmeot region of Nunavat in Canada's Arctic circle surrounded by an intricate lacework of tundra, waterways and breaking ice. High above the...
10:11 AM, Aug 24, 2012
New Delhi: ONGC Videsh Ltd, the overseas arm of state-owned Oil & Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), is eyeing stake in Russia's ambitious Arctic Ocean oil and gas projects with US supermajor ExxonMobil and Italian energy giant ENI. OVL on May 4 wrote to Russian state oil company Rosneft expressing interest in taking stake in one of the three joint ventures announced to explore for oil and gas beneath Arctic Ocean,...
01:13 PM, Aug 21, 2012
California: Google's online mapping service is incorporating additional images from Antarctica. The new images include flags marking the South Pole and the interiors of the supply cabins built for Ernest Shackleton's and Robert Scott's expeditions early in the 20th century. They are part of Google's Street View program, which offers ground-level, 360-degree panoramic images. The new images add to those Google has made available from the continent since 2010. Google...
10:41 AM, Jul 19, 2012
Sydney: Scientists have identified 15 distinct regions of Antarctica and its near-shore islands, based on the geography, geology, climate, flora and fauna of the ice-free areas, including the biologically distinct Antarctic Conservation Biogeographic Regions. Australian Antarctic Division terrestrial biologist Aleks Terauds, who led the study, said this is the first time a continent-wide assessment of the biogeography of Antarctica has been made using all of the available biodiversity data. "The...
12:27 PM, Jun 15, 2012
London: Three Britons in their 20s have undertaken a record-breaking trip around the world in a cab, travelling over 43,000 miles (over 69,000 km) and putting 80,000 pounds (about $128,600) on the meter. The three friends - Paul Archer, 25, Leigh Purnell, 24, and Johno Ellison, 28 - drove across four continents and 50 different countries in their trusty diesel motor, affectionately called Hannah, the Daily Express reported. They had...
11:45 AM, May 12, 2012
Caracas: A 33-year-old British adventurer set out on skis on Friday to attempt a historic solo crossing of Antarctica. Felicity Aston aims to become the first woman to make it across the frozen continent alone. She expects the journey of more than 1,000 miles (1,700 kilometers) will take about 70 days. She announced on Twitter that she was setting out from her starting point at the Ross Ice Shelf. "Having...
02:04 AM, Nov 26, 2011
Resolute Bay: A chartered Boeing 737-200 plane crashed on Saturday afternoon as it was approaching an airport in Canada's Arctic region, killing 12 people and injuring three, police said. Residents of the tiny hamlet of Resolute Bay in the Arctic territory of Nunavut and soldiers from a nearby military exercise rushed to the scene in a desperate effort to try and pull survivors from the flaming wreckage. First Air charter...
09:04 AM, Aug 21, 2011
Wellington: Thousands of passengers in Australia and New Zealand were affected when airlines suspended flights on Sunday as an ash cloud from an erupting volcano in southern Chile spread, threatening to damage engines. Australia's national carrier, Qantas Airways, said all the airline's flights in and out of the southeastern city of Melbourne would be grounded. Qantas also canceled 22 flights to and from New Zealand and the Australian island-state of...
07:54 PM, Jun 12, 2011
This week on '30 Minutes', Bahar Dutt highlights the concerning issues Arctic is facing today due to climatic changes. ...
10:11 PM, Jun 04, 2011
New Delhi: The Arctic is warming and like never before. Scientists say the Arctic Ocean will become ice-free in summer within the next 30 to 50 years. "The changes we are inducing now are quite dramatic and will change the livelihood for everyone one around," said Kim Holmen, Director, Norwegian Polar Institute. With an aim to travel to the Arctic to examine the science behind these claims CNN-IBN reach Svalbard,...
10:06 PM, Jun 03, 2011
Washington: Global warming will likely open up coastal areas in the Arctic to development but close vast regions of the northern interior to forestry and mining by mid-century as ice and frozen soil under temporary winter roads melt, researchers said. Higher temperatures have already led to lower summer sea ice levels in the Arctic and the melting has the potential to increase access for fishermen, tourists and oil and natural...
05:06 PM, Jun 01, 2011
![Bahar Dutt]( "Bahar Dutt")
May 27, 2011 The day was full of much action. It was snowing in the morning as we headed out with the scientists from ...
11:33 AM, May 28, 2011
![Bahar Dutt]( "Bahar Dutt")
The first signs that this journey is going to be full of a lot of adventure? We miss our connections from the quaint airport of ...
03:07 PM, May 27, 2011
Washington: India might become an observer of the Arctic Council though its membership is not open unless a country has territory above the Arctic Circle, a US official has said. "The Arctic Council is not open for membership unless a nation has territory above the Arctic Circle. India does not (have such territory). India might be able to become an observer of the Council, and be able to participate in...
11:14 AM, May 10, 2011
Los Angeles: On a remote island in the Canadian Arctic where no trees now grow, a newly unearthed mummified forest is giving researchers a peek into how plants reacted to ancient climate change. That knowledge will be key as scientists begin to tease out the impacts of global warming in the Arctic. The ancient forest found on Ellesmere Island, which lies north of the Arctic Circle in Canada, contained dried...
12:16 PM, Dec 17, 2010
![Canadian jets intercept Russian bombers]( "Canadian jets intercept Russian bombers")
Defence officials in Ottawa say Canadian CF-18 fighter jets had confrontation with two Russian TU-95 Bears. ...
11:32 AM, Jul 31, 2010
Moscow: Climate change on the planet may make the Arctic Ocean ice-free by 2050, a top Russian expert has said. "In 30-40 years, the Arctic may have no ice in the summertime, including the North Pole," Director of the Russian Meteorological Centre Alexander Frolov said. Quoting data from an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, Frolov said level of shrinking of ice cap in 2010 could exceed the 2007...
10:39 PM, Jul 26, 2010
