Arctic, features and articles | Educational Science

May 9, 2011

Close Call: Ozone Hole Nearly Opens Over Arctic

The loss of ozone over Antarctica has been well-known since the late 1970s, when a major report exposed the crisis happening on the continent. But this spring, an Arctic hole in the ozone nearly opened up over the northern United Kingdom, Scandinavia and Russia. Unusually cold temperatures in the stratosphere,...

Jun 21, 2011

NASA to Go Boldly ... to the Arctic, Again

NASA scientists are ready to set sail on the second leg of their voyage to study the changing waters of the Arctic Ocean. On June 25, the ICESCAPE mission (which stands for Impacts of Climate on Ecosystems and Chemistry of the Arctic Pacific Environment) resumes itsinvestigation of the impacts of...

Jun 24, 2011

Whale Ahoy! Arctic Expedition Makes First Sighting

The shout went up in the perpetual twilight of the midnight sun: A whale! Outi Tervo, a marine biologist aboard a research vessel forging north through perilous, ice-laden seas spotted the giant about a week into a monthlong Arctic expedition aimed at tracking the region's little-studied whale migrations. Minutes later,...

Jul 5, 2011

Largest Arctic Iceberg in 50 Years Spotted

A massive ice island that broke off a glacier in Greenland 11 months ago has been winding its way through Arctic waters ever since. Satellites have now spotted it the coast of Labrador, Canada, as seen in a new image. The ice island was formed when a 97-square-mile (251-square-kilometer) chunk...

Jul 5, 2011

Largest Arctic Iceberg in 50 Years Spotted Off Canada

A massive ice island that broke off a glacier in Greenland 11 months ago has been winding its way through Arctic waters ever since. Satellites have now spotted it the coast of Labrador, Canada, as seen in a new image. The ice island was formed when a 97-square-mile (251-square-kilometer) chunk...

Jul 11, 2011

Expedition Sets Sail to Plumb Arctic Depths

A ship expedition is under way to conduct the first modern-day survey of seafloor depths along a vast region of the Arctic Ocean. Water depth in the Kotzebue Sound, off northwestern Alaska, hasn't been studied in more than a century since the United States purchased Alaska in 1867. The 230-foot...

Jul 14, 2011

Arctic Landscape Anything But Boring

The Arctic may conjure images of a monotonous sheet of white ice as far as the eye can see. But in reality, that ice is anything but uniform. The sea ice atop the Arctic Ocean can as shown in this photograph from July 12, 2011 look quite varied. The areas...

Jul 19, 2011

In Images: NASA's Mission to Arctic Frontier

To boldly go... (Image credit: U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer Patrick Kelley)A NASA mission has gone boldly into the frigid waters of the Arctic Ocean. The space agency's first oceanographic research voyage to the top of the world is about half-way finished. The voyage, known as the Impacts...

Oct 2, 2011

Earth's First Arctic Ozone Hole Recorded

The high atmosphere over the Arctic lost an unprecedented amount of its protective ozone earlier this year, so much that conditions echoed the infamous ozone hole that forms annually over the opposite side of the planet, the Antarctic, scientists say. For the first time, sufficient loss occurred to reasonably be...

Dec 16, 2011

Icebreaker Ships Wrap Up Arctic Shelf-Mapping

A five-year mission to survey the Arctic continental shelf of North America using so-called icebreaker ships has come to a close, yielding important new data on the marine life and other key natural resources that are found there. The project, a collaboration between the United States and Canada, collected scientific...

Feb 29, 2012

Arctic Seas Surprisingly Alive in Winter

Even in the permanent twilight of Arctic winter, polar seas teem with teeny life, a surprise to the researchers who recently returned from one of the first expeditions ever to venture into roiling Arctic seas in wintertime. Scientists and crew spent 40 days aboard the research vessel Healy, a 420-foot-long...

May 17, 2012

Steps of First Native Americas Traced From the Arctic

A new analysis of the genetics of people living near the arctic is helping researchers understand how Native Americans made their way south from the polar region. Those that moved on left their genes behind, the researchers found. The researchers were looking for pieces of DNA that were shared between...

May 21, 2012

Toxic Mercury Accumulates in Arctic

Both atmospheric forces and the flow of circumpolar rivers carry mercury, a toxic element, north into the Arctic Ocean new research indicates. While the atmospheric source was previously recognized, it now appears that twice as much mercury actually comes from the rivers. The revelation implies that concentrations of the toxin...

Jun 18, 2012

Photo: 'White Marble' Shows Arctic View of Earth

A newly released image from NASA shows off our home planet from an unfamiliar angle — our iconic blue marble, snapped by a satellite that circles the Arctic, is arrayed in frosty white. The newly launched Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (S-NPP) satellite, which was blasted into space on Oct. 28,...

Aug 28, 2012

Why the Arctic Is Becoming a 'Giant Slushie'

Long-term thinning of Arctic sea ice combined with an intense, windy storm over the Arctic in early August contributed to a new record low for sea-ice extent, scientists said Monday (Aug. 27). It used to be the Arctic ice cover was like a big block of ice, said Walt Meier,...