Arctic

This Thursday, NASA will kick off the largest aerial survey ever undertaken of Earth's polar regions. The effort will help fill a multi-year gap between the satellite missions that usually track changes in ice, and should also help scientists understand how the changing ice sheets might contribute to sea level rise around the world.

The goal of the The Bering Strait Project’s International Ideas Competition this summer was to design a bridge or tunnel to connect Alaska to Russia. The purpose of the whole experiment? To bring different cultures together and to increase access to natural resources (Drill, baby, drill?).

The results, despite the seemingly outdated detente-ish rationale, were pretty fantastic.

Yes, but probably not anytime soon. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that the planet's average air temperature could warm by as much as 11.5°F by the end of the century. As a result, the world could be warmer than it was 55 million years ago, says Mark Lynas, author of Six Degrees, an analysis of hundreds of climate studies that reads like a nonfiction version of The Day after Tomorrow. Back then, the Canadian Arctic was as balmy as Florida and lousy with crocodile-like animals called champsosaurs.

One hundred thirty miles north of Nome, a small coastal village on Sarichef Island is feeling the effects of climate change. Shishmaref, Alaska, is falling into the sea. Rising temperatures are melting the permafrost, the layer of frozen ground beneath the surface. Without this firm base, waves have eroded the land on which Shishmaref’s villagers make their home. They must relocate their houses inland or start all over somewhere else.

No more happy feet for emperor penguins. According to a new study, if Antarctic ice continues to shrink at its current pace, emperor penguins will face extinction within the next 100 years.

Emperor penguins are one of only two open-sea Antarctic penguin species and depend on the sea ice for survival. After breeding, emperor penguins feed among the coastal pack ice where stretches of water are exposed. As a result of disappearing ice, the emperor penguins are being forced to retreat inward and could easily become displaced by other animals, losing out on nesting space.

The thought of studying sea ice conjures up visions of scientists wrapped in expedition-weight parkas straddling dangerous ice cracks to take measurements. And when it comes to on-the-ground fieldwork, that image isn't far off base. But in recent years, a remote-controlled robotic plane has made work conditions a bit more tolerable for researchers who study the ice.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were used to take aerial photos as early as the 1970s, but it wasn't until 2000 that they began to play a role in studying the physics of sea ice.

As the earth warms and our hunger for oil and other natural resources grows, the Arctic—once a peaceful repose for Santa—is already a crisscross of territorial claims that could get even more complicated in coming years according to a new map drawn up by researchers at Durham University, who say it is the only geographically accurate map of its kind.

If you thought your remote control monster truck was badass, check out the SnoMote. The new remote control snowmobile was funded by NASA to help scientists in polar regions collect climate data without forcing them onto cracking ice sheets. The bots, designed to work as a team, can be programmed to monitor a target area; a fleet of bots is outfitted with sensors and cameras to navigate terrain autonomously, all the while taking temperature and barometric readings.

It's official: polar bears are in trouble. Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne has announced that he is accepting the recommendation of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to list the polar bear as a "threatened" species under the Endangered Species Act. That means the bear is just one step from becoming "endangered," a category reserved for species on the brink of extinction.