Evidence Found for Planet-Cooling Asteroid 12,900 Years Ago

The dust refuses to settle on a debate about whether asteroid impacts caused one of Earth’s most famous cold snaps 12,900 years ago.

The latest evidence in the contentious discussion comes in the form of pieces of bedrock from Quebec, Canada, that seem to have been blasted out as far as Pennsylvania. “I’d say there’s evidence of an impact happening, for sure,” says Mukul Sharma, an isotope geochemist at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, and co-author of a study published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Mid-Pliocene warm-period deposits in the High Arctic yield insight into camel evolution

The mid-Pliocene was a global warm period, preceding the onset of Quaternary glaciations. Here we use cosmogenic nuclide dating to show that a fossiliferous terrestrial deposit that includes subfossil trees and the northern-most evidence of Pliocene ice wedge casts in Canada’s High Arctic (Ellesmere Island, Nunavut) was deposited during the mid-Pliocene warm period. The age estimates correspond to a general maximum in high latitude mean winter season insolation, consistent with the presence of a rich, boreal-type forest. Moreover, we report that these deposits have yielded the first evidence of a High Arctic camel, identified using collagen fingerprinting of a fragmentary fossil limb bone. Camels originated in North America and dispersed to Eurasia via the Bering Isthmus, an ephemeral land bridge linking Alaska and Russia. The results suggest that the evolutionary history of modern camels can be traced back to a lineage of giant camels that was well established in a forested Arctic.

ESA satellites looking deeper into sea ice

This year, satellites saw the extent of Arctic sea ice hit a record low since measurements began in the 1970s. ESA's SMOS and CryoSat satellites are now taking a deeper look by measuring the volume of the sea-ice cover.

Measurements from ESA's Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission show that ice has thinned significantly in the seasonal ice zones, with extensive areas less than half a metre thick.

Sea ice has a large influence on the heat exchange between the ocean and the atmosphere. The heat flux can change depending on the sea-ice thickness and the air temperature. Sea ice is also affecting atmospheric circulation at mid-latitudes.

"SEIFUL pentru SFARSITUL LUMII"

 Un siloz din Arctica pastreaza 100 de milioane din plantele noastre. Svalbard International Seed Vault (SISV), cunoscut si ca “seiful pentru sfarsitul lumii", este conceput pentru a pastra cate un esantion din toate varietatile de plante cunoscute de om.

Obiectivul este de a-l transforma, intr-un fel de arca a lui Noe, o magazie enorma care contine esantioane din plantele necesare pentru ca o fiinta umana sa reinceapa cucerirea Pamantului daca s-ar produce un dezastru ecologic, fie datorata unei cauze naturale, fie actiunii omului.

New impact crater in the Canadian arctic revealed

Last week, NASA’s Curiosity Rover made its historic landing on Mars. And while scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena California get ready to examine the environs of Gale crater, a new impact feature was revealed by researchers right here on Earth.

Two years ago, surveyors for the Natural Resources Canada Geo-Mapping for Energy and Minerals program noted an unusual geological feature on Victoria Island in the high Canadian Arctic. This 25 km-wide circular feature displayed signs of tilted strata, shatter cones, and fractured radial lines atypical of the region, but typical of a meteorite impact.

Drapel rusesc la Polul Nord, drapel american la Polul Sud

În Antarctica, atât SUA, cât si Rusia şi-au păstrat dreptul de a emite pretenţii teritoriale

Drapelul rusesc scufundat de ruşi în Oceanul Arctic este un gest simbolic, similar celui făcut de americani la Polul Sud. Steagul american este însă arborat la baza Amundsen-Scott, la aproape 3.000 de metri altitudine, potrivit AFP.

Baza americană este construită chiar pe locul Polului Sud geografic al planetei noastre, pe gheaţa Antarcticii, la înălţimea de 2.835 de metri. Numele bazei aminteşte de cei doi celebri exploratori, norvegianul Roald Amundsen şi britanicul Robert Falcon Scott, porniţi la începutul secolului XX să cucerească Polul Sud. Primul la Polul Sud a ajuns Amundsen, la 15 decembrie 1911.

Following the Ice: Is this Global Warming?

From the mess tent, we can hear huge boulders crashing through rapids half a kilometer away. The boulders sometimes sound like approaching footsteps, and as we’re all just a tiny bit nervous about an unlikely polar bear visit, conversations trail off and we listen.

In the four years our camp has existed on this glacial river, more meltwater is spilling out from beneath Leverett Glacier than we’ve ever seen. What’s more, the river has spilled over its banks and is now eroding a glacial moraine near our camp that was likely pushed there in the 1700’s during the Little Ice Age. It’s only June and the river is still rising.

Arctic Biologist Shares Astonishing Sea Creatures With the World

There is no road to the White Sea Biological Station, which sits at latitude 66° N on the cusp of the Arctic Circle. Located on the shores of its namesake, the White Sea, the only way to get there is by boat in summer and snowmobile in winter since the waters of Kandalaksha Bay are frozen six months out of the year.

Inside the station is an unlikely photo studio where Alexander Semenov, 25, is sharing his stunning photographs of arctic sea creatures with the global online community.