arctic

As climate change erodes the icy habitats of polar bears, they are left stranded from their usual food sources for longer periods of time. So instead of filling up on seals, a new study has found that polar bears are supplementing their diets with garbage, which is expected to become a growing threat to the species.

Few animals represent the face of the Arctic like polar bears. The largest bears in the world, polar bears are excellent swimmers who spend more time in the sea than they do on land. Sea ice is the platform from which they hunt the seals needed to obtain the necessary calories to survive.

President Joe Biden’s Interior Department confirmed on Wednesday that it has canceled three lease sales that would have opened millions of acres of ocean to oil and gas drilling.  Two of the lease sales would have taken place in the Gulf of Mexico and a third would have taken place off the coast of Alaska […]

A new forecast by scientists from the UK’s Meteorological Office shows that the likelihood of the planet breaching the threshold temperature of 1.5 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels — above which irreversible damage to Earth’s ecosystems and devastating impacts on human, animal and plant life would be likely to occur — is increasing. The probability […]

Both the North and South polar regions saw anomalous heat on Friday. Temperatures in parts of Antarctica were more than 70 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than average, while temperatures in parts of the Arctic were more than 50 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than average. This is notable because the Arctic is entering its spring, while Antarctica is […]

Something unusual is happening in the depths of the Arctic ocean: sinkholes are opening up on the seabed, some as large as a city block!  This discovery, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday, was based on high-resolution bathymetric surveys of the Canadian Beaufort Sea. “We know that big changes […]

Two of the most mythical whale species — the narwhal and beluga — have been hanging out together and may produce a fairy-tale-like hybrid species, the “narluga.” First seen in the St. Lawrence River in 2016, a lost male narwhal has been traveling with the beluga whale pod that adopted him ever since, and researchers […]

Today is International Women’s Day, a day to celebrate the achievements of women and girls around the world. This year’s theme is #BreakTheBias, and one field in which gender bias remains a persistent reality is the field of science and technology. According to the American Association of University Women, women only account for 28 percent […]