There have been many media headlines recently concerning the melting of the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, often focused on the opening of the North West Passage and further commercial opportunities in this region. Current predictions are that there will be no summer time sea ice coverage by 2050. This increased flux of fresh [...]

If you look at a map of the world and draw a line through London, a latitude of about 50 degrees North and follow this line across the world, you’ll see that it passes through southern Siberia and skims the southern shores of Hudson Bay in Canada. The week before I came out to the [...]

I do not consider myself to be an explorer and I have never had the desire to walk to the North Pole. I always compete with the cat to be in the warmest spot in the house. I take a hot water bottle to bed in the summer and I do not like to be [...]

Living and working in the high Arctic at this time of year is full of challenges. From the small everyday stuff like sleeping, washing and using the toilet, to the bigger issues that affect our science such as icing up of instruments, freezing of your water samples and keeping a hole in the ice open [...]

Once in Resolute Bay you feel like you are at the edge of the world, your view is of nothing but snow covered hills and sea ice. Explorers walking to the North Pole are flown from here to locations northward for their trek across the frozen sea. This is not our final destination either. We [...]

Editor’s Note: The Catlin Arctic Survey is a unique collaboration among polar explorers and scientists to gather data on the impacts of climate and environmental change in the Arctic. This 10-week international scientific expedition will travel to the farthest reaches of the Arctic to research the impact of melting ice caps on the world’s oceans [...]

Editor’s Note: Haley Smith Kingsland is an Earth systems master’s student at Stanford University specializing in science communication. For five weeks she’s in the land of no sunsets participating in ICESCAPE, a NASA-sponsored research cruise to investigate the effects of climate change on the Chukchi and Bering seas. This is her second blog post for [...]

Editor’s Note: Vienna, Austria-based science writer Chelsea Wald is taking part in a two-week Marine Biological Laboratory journalism fellowship at Toolik Field Station, an environmental research post inside the Arctic Circle. To see the current conditions in Toolik, check out the Webcam. Walking over Eriophorum, Watch your step of you’ll fall off ‘em. –Benjamin Shaw, [...]

Editor’s Note: Vienna, Austria-based science writer Chelsea Wald is taking part in a two-week Marine Biological Laboratory journalism fellowship at Toolik Field Station, an environmental research post inside the Arctic circle. To see the current conditions in Toolik, check out the Webcam. I was nearly eaten by a thermokarst. I just stepped in and, before [...]

Editor’s Note: Haley Smith Kingsland is an Earth systems master’s student at Stanford University specializing in science communication. For five weeks she’s in the land of no sunsets participating in ICESCAPE, a NASA-sponsored research cruise to investigate the effects of climate change on the Chukchi and Bering seas. This is her first blog post for [...]

A few weeks ago, the director of wildlife for Nunavut, Canada, made an unexpected declaration, claiming that the number of polar bears (Ursus maritimus) in the western Hudson Bay region is increasing, even though scientists say the population is declining. Western Hudson Bay is one of 19 distinct polar bear subpopulations, and previous research has [...]

Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) got a long-awaited boost on November 23 when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) finally designated more than 485,000 square kilometers of “critical habitat” for the species, which is listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The critical habitat was first proposed in October 2009, and a ruling [...]

Canada’s western Hudson Bay could lose its population of polar bears (Ursus maritimus) in as little as a decade, according to new research by biologist Andrew Derocher and others from the University of Alberta (U.A.). Derocher tells Yale Environment 360 that the polar bears in western Hudson Bay have lost 25 percent of their population [...]

Mammals, birds and fish living in the High Arctic experienced an average 26 percent drop in their populations between 1970 and 2004 due to the loss of sea ice, according to a new report from The Arctic Species Trend Index, "Tracking Trends in Arctic Wildlife." The 2010 report, commissioned and coordinated by the Whitehorse, Yukon–based [...]

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has proposed designating some 200,000 square miles of lands and waters along the north coast of Alaska as "critical habitat" for endangered polar bears (Ursus maritimus). In May 2008 the bears received limited protected status as a "threatened species" under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA). A proposed [...]

  "What’s more," snapped the Lorax. (His dander was up.) "Let me say a few words about Gluppity-Glupp. Your machine chugs on, day and night without stop making Gluppity-Glupp. Also Schloppity-Schlopp. And what do you do with this leftover goo?… I’ll show you. You dirty old Once-ler man, you! "You’re glumping the pond where the [...]

Normally, the news that Antarctica’s summer melt season is getting longer might just be added to an endless compilation of scientific evidence that confirms the reality of global climate change. A recent research report, though, seems to run counter to the conventional wisdom. It shows that if the ice pack at the bottom of the [...]

The cap of ice that sits atop the North Pole has shrunk to a record extent—and there is likely still more melting to come before the end of the summer of 2012. As of August 26, Arctic sea ice extent had shrunk to 4.1 million square kilometers, below the previous record minimum of 4.17 million [...]

Of course you know that polar ice sheets and glaciers are melting, and that as a result, sea level is starting to rise. But once you take in a new multimedia book, Deep Water, by Daniel Grossman, you’ll feel the changes in your gut. You will also have a good sense for how scientists are [...]

Flying about 460 meters above the seas off Alaska in 2004 on the hunt for bowhead whales, federal wildlife biologist Charles Monnett and colleagues spotted four white blobs floating in the water. The white blobs were polar bears, which drowned in the open ocean following a powerful Arctic storm. Two years later, Monnett and his [...]