The Arctic
Consisting of deep ocean covered by drifting pack ice and surrounded by continents and archipelagos around the Earth's North Pole, the Arctic is the planet's largest and least fragmented inhabited region.
Why the Arctic matters
Our changing relationship with polar bears
Climate change is pushing polar bears into cities in search of food.
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Stories
Predicting tipping points in the Arctic
Picturing life in a warmer, climate-altered Arctic is far from straightforward. As the Far North heats up more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet, it’s easy to imagine that, in the future, plants and animals to the south will merely march northward together as an orderly group: nature on Baffin Island in a few decades, say, might resemble nature found in northern Quebec today. It’s not that simple.
Published 17 June 2021
NEWS
Noise pollution from Arctic shipping more than doubled in six years putting whales and other marine life at risk
A new report shows that the amount of underwater noise in parts of the Arctic Ocean has doubled in just six years because of increased shipping traffic. The report was released by the Arctic Council and is the first time scientists have mapped noise pollution from shipping across the region. The results are staggering considering it took oceans in other parts of the world between 30 and 40 years to reach that magnitude of increase.
Published 26 May 2021
From The Circle
Playing the long game
Polar bears evolved from a brown, terrestrial omnivore to become a white, marine carnivore that has long thrived in the Arctic’s icy environment. But as Andrew Derocher explains, given the pace of change in the Arctic, evolution doesn’t favour this highly specialized bear of the ice.