This is the 33rd issuance of the annual assessment now known as State of the Climate, published in the Bulletin since 1996. As a supplement to the Bulletin, its foremost function is to document the status and trajectory of many components of the climate system. However, as a series, the …
DUNCAN WINGHAM is a worried man. Millions of people throughout the world living within one metre of the sea level - half a million in the Nile Delta itself - will lose their homes to the rising sea if his findings are correct. Global warming is causing a rise in …
IN what is being seen as a direct result of global warming, an iceberg has broken off the Ronne Ice Shelf in Antarctica. This was announced by the US National Ice Centre. The iceberg, which is called A-38, is 147 km long and 50 km wide. It covers an area …
SCIENTISTS say there is life in the lakes of Antarctica which are perpetually covered by ice. An expedition to the McMurdo Dry Valleys led by John Priscu, a microbial ecologist from the Montana State University, USA, to investigate whatever life forms exist in the Antarctic waters turned out to be …
life is possible on Mars or on a frozen-moon of Jupiter, say scientists. While drilling through ice that fills shallow lakes in Antarctica, they have found colonies of bacteria inside blocks of ice. Scientists say that these bacteria have been living in temperatures that rarely go above 0
the Department of Ocean Development (dod) is setting up an exclusive Antarc-tic Study Centre (asc). The centre will be first national polar research lab in India with the task of planning, and executing research and conducting expeditions to the icy continent. The asc would have a low temperature laboratory complex …
A large section of an ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula has broken away as a possible result of global warming, say scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) based at the University of Colorado, USA. Recent satellite images show that a section about 40 km-long and …
Lloyd Davis, zoologist at University of Otago, New Zealand, says that penguins use a practice similar to prostitution in order to obtain stones for their nests. Davis has made nine visits to Antarctica to study penguin behaviour. "They are not nearly as faithful as we thought,' he says. "They swap …
the collision of an asteroid with the Earth, responsible for creating a deep-sea crater off the southern coast of Chile, might have thrown life forms towards the South Pole 2.2 million years ago. For long, researchers have been trying to find out how marine life reached the dry valleys of …
with Japan ratifying the landmark Environmental Protection Protocol on December 15, the Antarctic Treaty - signed in 1959 - became a legal-binding instrument. Japan was the last of the 26 member nations to ratify the protocol. It bans mining in Antarctica for a minimum of 50 years and designates the …
The 26 member nations of the Antarctic Treaty are: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, China, Ecuador, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Poland, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, UK, the US and Uruguay.
india is completing a Rs 11.5-crore national research facility exclusively for polar science. Its first phase is taking shape at Goa. But experts who evaluated the country's Antarctic research programme want fewer junior scientists taking part, and suggest greater international cooperation. Goa's upcoming centre at the port town of Vasco …
Scientists have begun their endeavour to find out whether Antarctica was covered with ice 34 million years ago. They are also eager to know if there was glaciation in Antarctica, causing global changes in sea level before this time. Fifty geologists and geographers will take part in a drilling project …
a pathogen generally found in domestic chicken is suspected to have caused large scale deaths of wild penguins in a particular part of Antarctica. Infectious bursal disease virus ( ibdv )
'laboratory' is an odd name for a place that receives 10,000 visitors every year; where various organisations involved, recognise its heritage responsibilities and preserve old buildings and whose historic locations feature on ever more cruise liner tourist brochures. If you have a few thousand dollars to spare, you too can …
Antarctic seabirds are accumulating dangerously high levels of toxic organic chemicals in their bodies, according to Nico van den Brink of the Institute for Forestry and Nature Research in Wageningen, the Netherlands. He says the culprit is pollution produced by industrial plants thousands of kilometres away. He focused in particular …
AN EXPLOSION in the population of Antarctic fur seals has caused wide- spread changes to many coastal, terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems in the northern maritime Antarctic islands and on the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. Dominic A Hodgeson and Nadine M Johnston of the British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, conducted …
a recent research suggests that greenhouse heating would cause warmer, wetter air to reach Antarctica, where it would deposit its moisture as snow. Therefore, contrary to the presumed collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet, computer models are showing that the great mass of ice in the Antarctic could grow, …
INDIA has launched a series of new studies of lake sediments in Antarctica to understand the climatic conditions across many centuries in the icy continent. Announcing this at Mormugao port in Goa, the latest Indian scientific team to return from an Antarctica expedition said that it has also taken up …
