A critical blockade against some of nature’s coldest air has temporarily broken down—and much earlier in the year than normal. Disruptions in this circulation, known as the polar vortex, often push intensely cold air out of the Arctic toward lower latitudes. Experts still aren’t entirely sure how the current collapse will play out in our
Polar bears (Ursus maritimus) are typically solitary creatures. But in a Canadian town on Hudson Bay, the predators gather along the coast every fall to wait for the ice to freeze. “It’s an incredible phenomenon to experience,” Alysa McCall, director of science at Polar Bears International (PBI), tells Popular Science. “The bears return to this
Some animal rescues are more complicated than others—especially when the creature in peril is about to become a snack for a seagull on a remote Alaskan beach with polar bears lurking nearby. That was the sticky situation an orphaned Pacific walrus (a subspecies of Odobenus rosmarus) calf was in when two researchers found it on
The internet’s favorite Fat Bears in Alaska are not appearing on wildlife cameras quite as much these days. The salmon has been eaten, the Fat Bear Week crown has been won, and it’s time to survive the winter ahead. However, some other bears from the great white north are getting their close-up. Explore.org and Polar
A person has been fined for using a foghorn to wake a sleeping polar bear in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, a local official said. The incident happened earlier this month after someone sounded the alarm from onboard a vessel, which was sailing in a fjord in northwestern Svalbard – about 1,000 km (620 miles) from the
A new quality assessment report from NASA’s Commercial Satellite Data Acquisition (CSDA) program evaluates data from the Polar Geospatial Center’s (PGC) EarthDEM product. The results of the evaluation help inform NASA program management and the user community about the quality of commercial Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) for use in NASA science. Issued August 8, 2026,
