http://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. The northern coastline of Alaska midway between Point Barrow and Prudhoe Bay is eroding by up to one-third the length of a football field annually because of a "triple whammy" of declining sea ice, warming seawater and increased wave activity, according to new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder. http://phys.org/news180039688.html Space & Earth Mon, 14 Dec 2009 20:50:09 EST news180039688 High-resolution computer simulations performed by scientists at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS) are helping to understand the inflow of North Atlantic water to the Arctic Ocean and how this influences ocean climate. http://phys.org/news179671472.html Space & Earth Thu, 10 Dec 2009 13:00:07 EST news179671472 (PhysOrg.com) -- A team of Anglo-French scientists studying sedimentary deposits in the Bay of Biscay have concluded that Britain and France were separated by a "super-river" during three periods of glaciations, and they have produced a more complete picture of the process of separation than previously available. http://phys.org/news178954083.html Space & Earth Wed, 02 Dec 2009 09:30:01 EST news178954083 The first comprehensive review of the state of Antarctica's climate and its relationship to the global climate system is published this week by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR). The review - Antarctic Climate Change and the Environment - presents the latest research from the icy continent, identifies areas for future scientific research, and addresses the urgent questions that policy makers have about Antarctic melting, sea-level rise and biodiversity. http://phys.org/news178867843.html Space & Earth Tue, 01 Dec 2009 06:00:01 EST news178867843 (AP) -- Strong westerly winds in the southern Pacific Ocean have driven scores of icebergs originally headed toward New Zealand to the east, away from the country, an oceanographer said Tuesday. http://phys.org/news178867399.html Space & Earth Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:23:59 EST news178867399 (AP) -- Gert Ignatiussen returns to this fjord-front Inuit town with the spoils of his hunting trip. Six seals, all killed with a single shot to the head. http://phys.org/news178530519.html Space & Earth Fri, 27 Nov 2009 08:30:01 EST news178530519 (AP) -- Ships are on alert and maritime authorities are monitoring the movements of hundreds of menacing icebergs drifting toward New Zealand in the southern Pacific Ocean, officials said. http://phys.org/news178374623.html Space & Earth Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:33:50 EST news178374623 California experienced centuries-long droughts in the past 20,000 years that coincided with the thawing of ice caps in the Arctic, according to a new study by UC Davis doctoral student Jessica Oster and geology professor Isabel Montañez. http://phys.org/news177088772.html Space & Earth Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:20:55 EST news177088772 (AP) -- The Obama administration said Thursday it is designating more than 200,000 square miles in Alaska and off its coast as "critical habitat" for polar bears, an action that could add restrictions to future offshore drilling for oil and gas. http://phys.org/news175453921.html Biology Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:02:40 EST news175453921 NASA begins a series of flights Oct. 15 to study changes to Antarctica's sea ice, glaciers and ice sheets. The flights are part of Operation Ice Bridge, a six-year campaign that is the largest airborne survey ever made of ice at Earth's polar regions. http://phys.org/news174245200.html Space & Earth Thu, 08 Oct 2009 19:10:02 EST news174245200 You would have to go back at least 15 million years to find carbon dioxide levels on Earth as high as they are today, a UCLA scientist and colleagues report Oct. 8 in the online edition of the journal Science. http://phys.org/news174234562.html Space & Earth Thu, 08 Oct 2009 15:30:23 EST news174234562 (PhysOrg.com) -- Despite a slight recovery in summer Arctic sea ice in 2009 from record-setting low years in 2007 and 2008, the sea ice extent remains significantly below previous years and remains on a trend leading toward ice-free Arctic summers, according to the University of Colorado at Boulder's National Snow and Ice Data Center. http://phys.org/news174049524.html Space & Earth Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:10:05 EST news174049524 (AP) -- A federal agency must decide within three weeks whether spotted seals, which depend on sea ice off Alaska's coast, should be listed as a threatened or endangered species. http://phys.org/news173382362.html Biology Mon, 28 Sep 2009 19:00:02 EST news173382362 (AP) -- Earth's temperature is likely to jump nearly 6 degrees between now and the end of the century even if every country cuts greenhouse gas emissions as proposed, according to a United Nations update. http://phys.org/news173033068.html Space & Earth Thu, 24 Sep 2009 19:50:03 EST news173033068 The Arctic sea ice pack thawed to its third smallest size on record during the northern hemisphere summer of 2009, US government scientists said, citing satellite images. http://phys.org/news172505676.html Space & Earth Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:30:03 EST news172505676 America's Arctic has long been a place of myth and dream, where the Inupiat Eskimos have thrived, explorers endured and artists found inspiration. While competing visions of the Arctic have clashed in the past, we are now on a collision course between industrial development and the unspoiled environment that has supported Alaska Natives' traditional culture. http://phys.org/news172482937.html Space & Earth Fri, 18 Sep 2009 09:20:01 EST news172482937 (AP) -- Up to 200 dead walruses have been spotted on the shore of Chukchi Sea on Alaska's northwest coast. http://phys.org/news172424559.html Biology Thu, 17 Sep 2009 17:10:03 EST news172424559 The Arctic sea ice cover appears to have reached its minimum extent for the year, the third-lowest recorded since satellites began measuring sea ice extent in 1979, according to the University of Colorado at Boulder's National Snow and Ice Data Center. http://phys.org/news172419739.html Space & Earth Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:22:40 EST news172419739 A series of record-setting unmanned research flights are providing University of Colorado at Boulder researchers with some of the first 3-D observations of gaping holes in the Antarctic sea ice known as polynyas and the blasting winds that help form them. http://phys.org/news171818910.html Space & Earth Thu, 10 Sep 2009 16:50:01 EST news171818910 "The Arctic as we know it may soon be a thing of the past," says Eric Post, associate professor of biology at Penn State University. Post leads a large, international team that carried out ecosystem-wide studies of the biological response to Arctic warming during the fourth International Polar Year, which ended in 2008. The team's results will be reported on 11 September 2009 in the journal Science. http://phys.org/news171811398.html Space & Earth Thu, 10 Sep 2009 15:10:03 EST news171811398 (AP) -- Thousands of walruses are congregating on Alaska's northwest coast, a sign that their Arctic sea ice environment has been altered by climate change. http://phys.org/news171743169.html Biology Wed, 09 Sep 2009 19:26:43 EST news171743169 (PhysOrg.com) -- Global temperatures are increasing. Sea levels are rising. Ice sheets in many areas of the world are retreating. Yet there’s something peculiar going on in the oceans around Antarctica: even as global air and ocean temperatures march upward, the extent of the sea ice around the southern continent isn’t decreasing. In fact, it's increasing. http://phys.org/news171129293.html Space & Earth Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:10:06 EST news171129293 (PhysOrg.com) -- Research published by climate scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) has been named one of the most highly-cited in its field in the last two years. http://phys.org/news170328791.html Space & Earth Mon, 24 Aug 2009 10:34:03 EST news170328791 (AP) -- The nation's secretary of commerce has approved a plan that would prohibit an expansion of commercial fishing in the Arctic, at least until more is known about the area. http://phys.org/news170064801.html Space & Earth Fri, 21 Aug 2009 09:40:05 EST news170064801 The Baltic Sea winter climate has changed more in the last 500 years than previously thought. Research at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, shows that our part of the world has experienced periods of both milder and colder winters, and the transitions between these climate types seem to have been abrupt. http://phys.org/news169458454.html Space & Earth Fri, 14 Aug 2009 09:10:01 EST news169458454 A small NASA aircraft completed its first successful science flight Thursday in partnership with the University of Colorado at Boulder as part of an expedition to study the receding Arctic sea ice and improve understanding of its life cycle and the long-term stability of the Arctic ice cover. The mission continues through July 24. http://phys.org/news167055889.html Space & Earth Fri, 17 Jul 2009 13:26:52 EST news167055889 Significant sea ice formation occurred in the Arctic earlier than previously thought is the conclusion of a study published this week in Nature. "The results are also especially exciting because they suggest that sea ice formed in the Arctic before it did in Antarctica, which goes against scientific expectation," says scientific team member Dr Richard Pearce of the University of Southampton's School of Ocean and Earth Science based at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS). http://phys.org/news166883285.html Space & Earth Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:28:23 EST news166883285 A runaway spurt of global warming 55 million years ago turned Earth into a hothouse but how this happened remains worryingly unclear, scientists said on Monday. http://phys.org/news166715232.html Space & Earth Mon, 13 Jul 2009 14:47:39 EST news166715232 (PhysOrg.com) -- Arctic sea ice thinned dramatically between the winters of 2004 and 2008, with thin seasonal ice replacing thick older ice as the dominant type for the first time on record. The new results, based on data from a NASA Earth-orbiting spacecraft, provide further evidence for the rapid, ongoing transformation of the Arctic's ice cover. http://phys.org/news166204112.html Space & Earth Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:49:12 EST news166204112 New research, which reconstructs the extent of ice in the sea between Greenland and Svalbard from the 13th century to the present indicates that there has never been so little sea ice as there is now. The research results from the Niels Bohr Institute, among others, are published in the scientific journal, Climate Dynamics. http://phys.org/news165668875.html Space & Earth Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:00:02 EST news165668875