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Cold cash for cold science

Posted by Hannah

The recent funding wrap-up from the international polar year (IPY) has left many Canadian researchers scratching their heads, trying to find a way to continue their arctic science projects. A new grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada may help close that research-funding gap. In its announcement yesterday, NSERC opened a competition to fund large-scale research with a focus—for this round of funding—on northern earth systems. The Discovery Frontiers initiative will heft Can$4 million over five years on the successful research team to study the physical, chemical, biological and social factors that affect the North and its … Read more…

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Collapse of the ice titans

Posted by Hannah

Nature Monitoring Greenland’s melting glaciers from a 15-metre long sailboat. In early August, a 260-kilometre-square chunk of ice broke off the Petermann Glacier — the largest iceberg to calve in the Arctic Ocean since 1962. The collapse didn’t surprise Richard Bates, a geophysicist from the University of St Andrews, UK. During a visit to Petermann last summer, with glaciologists Jason Box of the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University in Columbus and Alun Hubbard of Aberystwyth University, UK, the three noted rifts and meltwater — a sign of pending collapse. They installed time-lapse cameras atop the 900-metre-high cliffs … Read more…

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Canada picks site for Arctic Research Station

Posted by Hannah

Cambridge Bay location offers a wealth of opportunities for studying the far north. After months of deliberation, the Canadian government has chosen Cambridge Bay — a hamlet midway along the Northwest Passage in the country’s far north — as the site for a world-class Arctic research station. Once built, the station will house scientists all year round, giving them a modern space to study Arctic issues, including climate change and natural resources. It will host conference facilities and laboratories for research on marine biology and geophysics, provide ecologists with the space to do long-term ecological monitoring in aquaria and greenhouses, … Read more…

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Arctic Ocean full up with carbon dioxide

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Loss of sea ice is unlikely to enable Arctic waters to mop up more carbon dioxide from the air. As climate scientists watched the Arctic’s sea-ice cover shrink year after year, they thought there might be a silver lining: an ice-free Arctic Ocean could soak up large amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere, slowing down the accumulation of greenhouse gases and climate change. But research published in Science today suggests that part of the Arctic Ocean has already mopped up so much CO2 that it could have almost reached its limit1. Wei-Jun Cai, a biogeochemist at the University of Georgia … Read more…

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Arctic Expedition: Life on the Amundsen

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When the CCGS Amundsen, a Canadian research ice breaker, left its home port of Quebec City in July 2007, it embarked upon a historic 15-month expedition that would have it travel across the Arctic and overwinter in the Beaufort Sea. The scientists on board the  Amundsen might spend their days hunting for ice algae, fishing for zooplankton, or surveying the contours of the nearby ice floes.   But it’s not all work and no play for the researchers and graduate students that call the Amundsen home. This slideshow was first published by The Gazette in December 2008. The World Federation of … Read more…