Can hungry reindeer transform a landscape?
PhD student Marcus Spiegel is in the right place to find out: the Yamal Peninsula, Western Siberia.
Let’s talk cryosphere, COP26
Robbie Mallett, a PhD student at the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling, University College London, spoke to Sam Cornish about his experience in the Cryosphere Pavilion at COP26 in Glasgow. What was the Cryosphere Pavilion and why was it at COP26? COP26 is not just for politicians, it’s also a chance for scientists, particularly …
Surveying pollutants on a remote Arctic island
This summer, DPhil student Will Hartz joined a scientific expedition to the remote Norwegian island of Jan Mayen. In satellite imagery the island appears as a punctuation mark, adrift in the ocean. But this volcanic island is rooted in the bathymetric barrier that helps to define the circulation of the Greenland, Icelandic and Norwegian seas; …
Polar Forum researchers will reveal the climate potential of rewilding in the Arctic
This blog post comes from Jeppe A. Kristensen, Carlsberg Foundation Visiting Fellow based in the School of Geography and Environment. The king of the Pleistocene Siberian steppes, the woolly mammoth, is set to return after 3,900 years of extinction! This was the intriguing, yet highly controversial message that hit the world media in September this …
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The World Seabird Conference goes virtual
Alice Edney’s first major conference experience was online. Here’s how she found it
When lab-work takes you to the field
Due to exceptional circumstances, DPhil student Maria Dance is doing her lab work in a place we normally associate with fieldwork.
We have a YouTube Channel!!
Please do visit our brand new YouTube channel by clicking in here. We will upload the recorded videos of our seminar series in it. You can watch Drs Tom Hart and Isla Myers-Smith past seminars there.
Warming Temperatures Are Driving Arctic Greening
As Arctic summers warm, Earth’s northern landscapes are changing. Using satellite images to track global tundra ecosystems over decades, a new collaborative study involving the University of Oxford and global institutions across the world, found the region has become greener, as warmer air and soil temperatures lead to increased plant growth. For the expanded story, …
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Sea-ice-free Arctic makes permafrost vulnerable to thawing
New research, published in Nature, led by scientists at the University of Oxford’s Department of Earth Sciences, and at the Geological Survey of Israel, provides evidence from Siberian caves suggesting that summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean plays an essential role in stabilising permafrost and its large store of carbon. More info on …
Read more “Sea-ice-free Arctic makes permafrost vulnerable to thawing”
Emergence of deep convection in the Arctic Ocean under a warming climate
Oxford University Polar Forum members Helen L. Johnson and Yves Plancherel publish with Camille Lique in Climate Dynamics. The Arctic Basin was found to become seasonally ice-free, when modelled in response to a 4-time increase in atmospheric CO2 levels. Read the abstract on our publications page.