Latest Polar ice cap Stories
Researchers and flight crew arrived in Thule, Greenland, on Monday, March 14, for the start of NASA's 2011 Operation IceBridge, an airborne mission to study changes in Arctic polar ice. This year's plans include surveys of Canadian ice caps and expanded international collaboration.The state of Earth's polar ice sheets, glaciers and sea ice is an important indicator of climate change and plays a key role in regulating global climate. With IceBridge, NASA is pushing ahead with its commitment to...
WASHINGTON, March 15, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Researchers and flight crew arrived in Thule, Greenland, on Monday, March 14, for the start of NASA's 2011 Operation IceBridge, an airborne mission to study changes in Arctic polar ice. This year's plans include surveys of Canadian ice caps and expanded international collaboration. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The state of Earth's polar ice sheets, glaciers and sea ice is an important indicator of climate...
Ice sheets have been losing mass at an accelerated rate over the past two decades, and these changes could soon become the dominant contributor to rising global sea levels, a NASA-funded study has discovered.The results of the nearly 20-year satellite research project--the longest study ever to track changes in polar ice sheet mass--showed that ice sheets in Greenland and the Antarctic lost an average of 475 gigatons of combined mass annually.Each gigaton is roughly equal to 2.2 trillion...
Scientists may have solved the mystery of the carbon dioxide ice disappearance early in the Northern Martian springs followed later by its sudden reappearance, revealing a very active water cycle on the planet. Dr. Bernard Schmitt and Mr. Thomas Appéré are reporting their results about water ice mobility during Martian Year 28, at the European Planetary Science Congress in Rome from Wednesday 22nd to Friday 24th September.Seasonal ice deposits are one of the most important Martian...
GREENBELT, Md., Sept. 1 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Operation IceBridge - a NASA airborne mission to observe changes in Earth's rapidly changing polar land ice and sea ice - is soon to embark on its fourth field season in October. The mission is now paralleled by a campaign to bring data to researchers as quickly as possible and to accelerate the analysis of those changes and how they may affect people and climate systems. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) (Logo:...
A chain of past natural events may hold lessons for the futureScientists still puzzle over how Earth emerged from its last ice age, an event that ushered in a warmer climate and the birth of human civilization. In the geological blink of an eye, ice sheets in the northern hemisphere began to collapse and warming spread quickly to the south. Most scientists say that the trigger, at least initially, was an orbital shift that caused more sunlight to fall across Earth's northern half. But how did...
Almost 40 years ago, NASA's Mariner 9 spacecraft relayed to Earth the first video images of Mars' northern polar ice cap, revealing a strange pattern of spiral swirls that has puzzled scientists ever since. Using new data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), researchers have finally uncovered the secrets of the troughs that snake through the ice cap like a spiraled maze. Jack Holt of the University of Texas and his graduate student Isaac Smith used radar data from MRO's Shallow...
North America, Europe and eastern Asia could see more cold, moist and snowy winters much like the one that just passed, according to one top scientist. James Overland of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) told the AFP news agency, "Cold and snowy winters will be the rule rather than the exception." It may seem counter-intuitive, but warmer Arctic climates caused by climate change influence air pressure at the North Pole, which shifts wind patterns in such a way...
NASA's first dedicated oceanographic field campaign goes to sea next week to take an up-close look at how changing conditions in the Arctic are affecting the ocean's chemistry and ecosystems that play a critical role in global climate change.The ICESCAPE mission, which stands for "Impacts of Climate on Ecosystems and Chemistry of the Arctic Pacific Environment," will investigate the impacts of climate change on the ecology and biogeochemistry of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas along...
PASADENA, Calif., May 26 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Data from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) have helped scientists solve a pair of mysteries dating back four decades and provided new information about climate change on the Red Planet. (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The Shallow Radar, or SHARAD, instrument aboard MRO revealed subsurface geology allowing scientists to reconstruct the formation of a large chasm and a series of spiral troughs on the...
