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Arctic News Stories
Current Arctic News Events, Discoveries and Articles

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Toxic mercury, accumulating in the Arctic, springs from a hidden source
Environmental scientists at Harvard have discovered that the Arctic accumulation of mercury, a toxic element, is caused by both atmospheric forces and the flow of circumpolar rivers that carry the element north into the Arctic Ocean. (2012-05-21)

Bright future for solar power in space
Solar power gathered in space could be set to provide the renewable energy of the future thanks to innovative research being carried out by engineers at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. (2012-05-17)

The gut could reveal effect of climate change on fish
As sea temperatures rise, stocks of some fish species can decline while others may grow, reveals new research from the University of Gothenburg looking at gastrointestinal function in fish. (2012-05-15)

University of Pittsburgh Geologists Map Prehistoric Climate Changes in Canada's Yukon Territory
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have joined an international group of scientists to study past climate changes in the Arctic. (2012-05-09)

EARTH: US Navy navigates a sea change in the Arctic
The idea that the Arctic is changing is not breaking news. Sea-ice extent has been declining by 12 percent per decade since 1979, and the ice is thinning too. Because of this, new shipping routes are becoming accessible during the summer months, and the Arctic is beginning to attract parties interested in resource exploration, scientific research and tourism. (2012-04-18)

CU-Boulder study shows Greenland may be slip-sliding away due to surface lake melt
Like snow sliding off a roof on a sunny day, the Greenland Ice Sheet may be sliding faster into the ocean due to massive releases of meltwater from surface lakes, according to a new study by the University of Colorado Boulder-based Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. (2012-04-17)

Thawing permafrost may have led to extreme global warming events
Scientists analysing prehistoric global warming say thawing permafrost released massive amounts of carbon stored in frozen soil of Polar Regions exacerbating climate change through increasing global temperatures and ocean acidification. (2012-04-05)

Thawing permafrost 50 million years ago led to global warming events
In a new study reported in Nature, climate scientist Rob DeConto of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and colleagues elsewhere propose a simple new mechanism to explain the source of carbon that fed a series of extreme warming events about 55 million years ago, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), and a sequence of similar, smaller warming events afterward. (2012-04-05)

PCBs levels down in Norwegian polar bears
It's never been easy to be a polar bear. They may have to go months without eating. Their preferred food, seal, requires enormous luck and patience to catch. Add to that the melting of Arctic sea ice due to climate change, and the poisoning of the Arctic by toxic chemicals, and it's easy to see why polar bears worldwide are in trouble. (2012-03-30)

Signs of thawing permafrost revealed from space
Satellite are seeing changes in land surfaces in high detail at northern latitudes, indicating thawing permafrost. This releases greenhouse gases into parts of the Arctic, exacerbating the effects of climate change. (2012-03-28)