Promising development to protect the atmosphere is underway, as NASA just shed light on the launch of its Arctic Research of the Composition of the Troposphere from Aircraft and Satellites (ARCTAS). What's believed to be the most extensive field campaign ever to study the chemistry of the Arctic's lower atmosphere, the project employs three airborne laboratories that intends to explain how pollutants cause climate changes in the Arctic sea. Fly to the full article for more details.

Global warming has been a hot topic for a few years now and while efforts by numerous organizations have made headway in global awareness, one question is yet to be answered: are we too late? In a new research, scientists have calculated that we may see long-term consequences on the Earth's climate due to human activity as early as the next decade. Details in the full article.

Data gathered from military and weather satellites that ice sheets over at Greenland has melted at a record rate - the most ever recorded since rate measurements began in the '70s, says a report made by climate scientist Konrad Steffen of the University of Colorado in Boulder. More details of this disheartening turn of events after the jump.

We've seen global warming rear its ugly head in ways that run from in the subtle to the stark in recent years. A recent report, however, suggests that the Pentagon's Northern defense strategy may be put into compromise by the planetary crisis. Find out what's happening to NORAD radars up in Alaska and Canada in the detailed version.

Nothing like visual aids to get the point across. NASA has recently released a video simulating the Arctic's sea ice cover - the semi-permanent frozen seawater that surrounds the region. The video will illustrate the region's perennial ice cover for the end of the summer of the year 2005, before comparing it to 2007 and 1979's perennial ice covers.

In case the video's a little hard to figure out, here's NASA's explanation on the visuals:

The 2007 Arctic summer sea ice reached the lowest extent of perennial ice cover on record - nearly 25% less than the previous low set in 2005. The area of the perennial ice has been steadily decreasing since the satellite record began in 1979, at a rate of about 10% per decade. But the 2007 minimum, reached on September 14, is far below the previous record made in 2005 and is about 38% lower than the climatological average.

As you guys may recall, the United Nations came out with its own Global Environment Outlook regarding this topic. If these apparently linked reports from the UN and NASA are accurate, we may be looking at some very grim prospects for the years to come.

Scientists have just a completed a study called State of the Arctic report which seeks to determine just what state the northern polar region is currently in. The results are not very encouraging. As a matter of fact, one might conclude that they're downright grim.

Scientists now fear that the melting of the polar ice may already have exceeded the "tipping point" which is the imaginary threshold of ice melting without permanently damaging the region. If the worst has come to pass, this will severely impact the world in more ways than one.

The loss of sea ice near the North Pole and the gradual thinning of ice layers in the Arctic are just some of the manifestations that climate change is taking a toll in nature. Scientists now say that ecosystems in land and sea are at risk more than ever.

And unlike in Las Vegas, "what happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic," says research administrator Richard Spinrad as he points to the temperate regions as the next in line to become affected of what's going on in the Arctic.

James Overland, a scientist with National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory explains that the damage they've seen this year was so great that it would be a long shot at best to get the region back to where it was two decades ago. "It won’t necessarily be a continued acceleration of more ice lost, but we’re certainly not going to go back to where we were before," he adds.

Scientists continue to disagree on when exactly the Arctic tipping point lies, or if we've already crossed the line. The only thing certain is that if we're not there yet, we're certainly closing in on "full steam ahead".

Ayles Island, the mighty floating island made of ice, has dislodged from its resting place in the Queen Elizabeth islands due to unusually warm weather. The island split in two way earlier than expected and are moving at a very fast pace to escape the Arctic area.

Scientists believe that the warm weather that caused it to break from the Canadian Ice shelf two years ago and also caused it to break in two will ultimately also make it melt sooner. While other ice islands have survived more than 50 years in the Arctic area, these ones will melt quicker because of the heat.

Where are the giant ice cubes heading now? Towards a giant glass of orange juice? Well, one piece is moving towards the Norwegian Bay while the other is heading towards Penny Strait, escaping the Arctic area and heading south for the holidays. They say it's lovely there are this time of year.

US scientists have predicted that over two-thirds of the Polar Bear population will die by 2050 because of global warming. In that time, the polar bears will lose access to as much as 42 percent of their hunting and breeding grounds.

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientist Steven Amstrup pointed out that what will drive these polar bears to their deaths is mainly the declining sea ice due to increasing temperatures. It's actually very logical if you think about it considering polar bears use the ice as a staging area to hunt seals, their primary food source.

Will reducing greenhouse gas emissions help? Not much, according to USGS's director Mark Myers. He said that "despite any mitigation of greenhouse gases, we are going to see the same amount of energy in the system the next 20, 30 or 40 years." Don't think that nothing is being done to counteract this, though. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne's agency has already proposed to add the polar bear to the endangered species list which should help alleviate the problem.

All the information that was gathered are based on six months of data where the health of three polar bear groups and their dependency on Arctic sea ice were documented and analyzed. However, it is all pretty much theoretical at this point. That being said, are we going to have to wait and see if it will come true before we act on it?

An ice "island" slightly larger than Manhattan broke off from an ice shelf in the Canadian coast two years ago and drifted south where it is now stuck in an inlet between two of the Queen Elizabeth islands. The giant ice cube is the largest piece to have broken off from a larger body of ice in 25 years and is feared to be an effect of global warming.

The ice island measures ten miles long and three miles across. Scientists have been tracking the island since it broke off the Ayles Ice Shelf (hence the name of the island: Ayles Ice Island). It was a concern that the island might drift west and wreak icy havoc on the oil and gas fields near Alaska in the Beaufort Sea. (Brings a whole new imagery to the whole "oil and water don't mix" maxim.)

From satellite pictures, the island is measured to have drifted 300 miles to get where it is now, stuck in the Canadian High Arctic. Scientists believe that this may be the safest thing to have happened to the island. Considering its size, it could really do a lot of damage. Until it drifts off again and melts off somewhere in the Atlantic, it remains to be a temporary fixture in the Arctic map.

Image from the Canadian Space Agency.

Climate change estimates have once predicted that a complete summer melt of the Arctic ice caps may happen between the years 2070 and 2100, but scientists in the National Snow and Ice Data Center report that it may happen as soon as 2030.

According to a new study based on the most recent satellite images of the frozen North, the ice has shrunk to an all-time low of 2.02 million square miles, a shade smaller than the previous low of 2.05 million square miles in 2005.

Scientists explain that the figure could dip further as there's still roughly a full month left before the Arctic's melt season is over and ice starts forming again.

The Northern ice sheets are critical to the stability of the planet's temperature, according to the research institution. Ice is a natural reflector of the suns rays back into space. With less ice, oceans tend to absorb more sunlight, then heat up to melt the ice further, causing a compound effect of melting.

More distressing is the fact that the skies over the Arctic Ocean are unusually clear. This means that more sunlight goes into the region, causing the oceans to heat up faster and for the melting to happen on a much bigger scale. This may result in a faster meltdown than experts have originally expected. Researcher Mark Serreze says that there's very strong evidence that greenhouse gases have a lot to do with the acceleration of this phenomenon.

Skeptics, however, say that the melting of ice is part of a natural process that will stabilize in due time, but Serreze thinks otherwise. "We simply can't explain everything through natural processes," he says.