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 …
A new study led by the Georgia Institute of Technology provides further evidence of a relationship between melting ice in the Arctic regions and widespread cold outbreaks in the Northern Hemisphere. The study's findings could be used to improve seasonal forecasting of snow and temperature anomalies across northern continents. Since …
Royal Dutch Shell's bid to drill in the Arctic this summer took another step forward on Friday when the U.S. Interior Department approved its oil spill response plan for the Chukchi Sea. Shell's response plan would allow the company to rapidly contain a massive spill in the challenging Arctic environment, …
U.S. officials have approved an oil-spill plan for Royal Dutch Shell PLC as the company looks to begin drilling in the Arctic, saying Friday that Shell has demonstrated its ability to respond to potential spills in icy waters despite protests from environmental groups. The approval, granted by the U.S. Interior …
While taking part in a recent climate change expedition to Antarctica, Bangladesh's representative, Environment and Forests Minister Dr Hasan Mahmud, pointed out Bangladesh's vulnerability to climate change. Sharing his experience on the expedition at a press conference in the ministry yesterday, Hasan also said many western policymakers and scientists witnessed …
Record-low temperatures in parts of Eastern Europe pushed the death toll from Arctic conditions to at least 89 people on Wednesday, and have forced Russian gas provider Gazprom to warn over supplies to Europe. Europe had enjoyed a relatively mild winter up until last weekend, but a Siberian system swinging …
As human activity in the Arctic increases, so does the risk of hydrocarbon pollution events. On site bioremediation of contaminated soil is the only feasible clean up solution in these remote areas, but degradation rates vary widely between bioremediation treatments. Most previous studies have focused on the feasibility of on …
The Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) established an Expert Group on Short-Lived Climate Forcers (SLCFs) in 2009 with the goal of reviewing the state of science surrounding SLCFs in the Arctic and recommending the science tasks that AMAP should conduct or promote to improve the state of knowledge and …
Dealing with economic crises, environmental pressures and dwindling resources keeps the oil and gas industry constantly on its toes, says Kate McAlpine.
Arctic Sea could be ice free by the summer of 2015, a leading ocean expert in Britain has claimed. According to Prof Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University, the ice that forms over the Arctic sea is shrinking so rapidly that it may vanish altogether in four years' time, destroying the …
Facebook announced today that it would immediately begin building a massive data centre — its third globally and first in Europe — in the Swedish town of Luleaa, near the Arctic Circle. “After a rigorous review process of sites across Europe, we concluded that Luleaa offered the best package of …
The observation of unusually low ozone levels over the Arctic last winter provides reassuring evidence that our knowledge of stratospheric chemistry is robust. Whether such an episode will happen again is an open question.
Chemical ozone destruction occurs over both polar regions in local winter–spring. In the Antarctic, essentially complete removal of lower-stratospheric ozone currently results in an ozone hole every year, whereas in the Arctic, ozone loss is highly variable and has until now been much more limited. Here we demonstrate that chemical …
Rounding the northernmost tip of Russia in his oceangoing tugboat this summer, Capt. Vladimir V. Bozanov saw plenty of walruses, some pods of beluga whales and in the distance a few icebergs. With an icebreaker leading the way, the Vladimir Tikhonov, carrying gas condensate, passed Cape Dezhnev in late August. …
There is heated discussion over whether or not this year's seasonal sea-ice minimum in the Arctic constitutes a record (see http://go.nature.com/bmydx7 and, for example, http://go.nature.com/286mdp). But the debate misses the crucial point: this year's minimum is evidence that the unprecedented seasonal minimum of 2007 was not a one-off. (Correspondence)
A huge hole that appeared in the Earth's protective ozone layer above the Arctic in 2011 was the largest recorded in the Northern Hemisphere, triggering worries the event could occur again and be even worse, scientists said in a report on Monday. The ozone layer high in the stratosphere acts …
Paris: An ozone hole five times the size of California opened over the Arctic this spring, matching ozone loss over Antarctica for the first time on record, scientists said on Sunday. Formed by a deep chill over the North Pole, the unprecedented hole at one point shifted over eastern Europe, …
