The polar ice cap in the Arctic has melted to near its 2007 record minimum level and in some areas is 50 percent smaller than average, Russia's environmental monitoring agency said Thursday.
Arctic ice cover receded to near record lows this summer, opening elusive northern trade routes from Asia to the West, Russia's climate research agency said on Wednesday.
Arctic tundra soils store large amounts of carbon (C) in organic soil layers hundreds to thousands of years old that insulate, and in some cases maintain, permafrost soils. Fire has been largely absent from most of this biome since the early Holocene epoch, but its frequency and extent are increasing, probably in response to climate warming. The effect of fires on the C balance of tundra landscapes, however, remains largely unknown.
Polar bear cubs forced to swim long distances with their mothers as their icy Arctic habitat melts appear to have a higher mortality rate than cubs that didn't have to swim as far, a new study reports.
Polar bears hunt, feed and give birth on ice or on land, and are not naturally aquatic creatures.
Tiny algae and a whale native to the Pacific have crossed a thawing Arctic Ocean in what may portend a marine invasion threatening Atlantic fish stocks, scientists said on Sunday.
The Pacific algae, absent from the North Atlantic for 800,000 years according to fossil records, apparently returned after climate change thawed sea ice and currents carried the microscopic plants across the Arctic Oc
British oil explorer Cairn Energy said on Saturday it had suspended drilling from a rig off the coast of Greenland after environmental protesters breached an exclusion zone.
The company, which plans to drill a total of four wells off Greenland this summer, said Greenpeace activists boarded its "Leiv Eiriksson" drilling vessel and entered a restricted area.
An irreversible climate tipping point could occur within the next 20 years as a result of the release of huge quantities of organic carbon locked away as frozen plant matter in the vast permafrost region of the Arctic,scientists have found.
Billions of tons of frozen leaves and roots that have lain undisturbed for thousands of years in the permanently frozen ground of the northern hemisphere are
Global warming will likely open up coastal areas in the Arctic to development but close vast regions of the northern interior to forestry and mining by mid-century as ice and frozen soil under temporary winter roads melt, researchers said.
Higher temperatures have already led to lower summer sea ice levels in the Arctic and the melting has the potential to increase access for fishermen, tourist
Environmental group Greenpeace has sent two vessels into the northern North Sea to protest against oil exploration off Greenland, the organization and officials said on Tuesday.
Greenpeace's action came as British explorer Cairn Energy
laid out its plans for drilling off Greenland this summer and began preparing to move the Leiv Eiriksson rig into position.
