This booklet highlights the importance of the polar regions in the entire Earth system, particularly in climate. It describes some of the major environmental changes that have taken place in the Arctic and Antarctic in recent years and considers possible changes over the next century.--Publisher's description.
Polar Remote Sensing is a two-volume work providing a comprehensive, multidisciplinary discussion of the applications of satellite sensing. Volume 2 focuses on the ice sheets, icebergs, and interactions between ice sheets and the atmosphere and ocean. It contains information about the applications of satellite remote sensing in all relevant polar related disciplines, including glaciology, meteorology, climate and radiation balance and oceanogaraphy. It also provides a brief review of the state-of-the-art of each discipline, including current issues and questions. Various passive and active remote sensor types are discussed, and the book then concentrates on specific geophysical applications. Its interdisciplinary approach means that major advances and publications are highlighted. Polar Remote Sensing: Ice Sheets summarizes fundamental principles of detectors, imaging and geophysical product retrieval includes a chapter on the important new field of satellite synthetic-aperture radar interferometry is a "one stop shop" for polar remote sensing information contains significant new information on the Earth's polar regions describes sophisticated groundbased remote sensing applications with specific reference to their use in polar regions.
th Towards the end of the 19 century some researchers put forward the hypothesis that the Polar regions may play the key role in the shaping of the global climate. This supposition found its full confirmation in empirical and th model research conducted in the 20 century, particularly in recent decades. The intensification of the global warming after about 1975 brought into focus the physical causes of this phenomenon. The first climatic models created at that time, and the analyses of long observation series consistently showed that the Polar regions are the most sensitive to climatic changes. This aroused the interest of numerous researchers, who thought that the examination of the proc esses taking place in these regions might help to determine the mechanisms responsible for the "working" of the global climatic system. To date, a great number of publications on this issue have been published. However, as a re view of the literature shows, there is not a single monograph which comprises the basic information concerning the current state of the Arctic climate. The last study to discuss the climate of the Arctic in any depth was published in 1970 (Climates a/the Polar Regions, vol. 14, ed. S. Orvig) by the World Survey of Climatology, edited by H. E. Landsberg. This publication, however, does not provide the full climatic picture of many meteorological elements.
Although international scientific cooperation - particularly in meteorology - was established previous to the first International Polar Year, the IPY-1 (1882-83) is considered to be the first revolutionary step towards an extensive international cooperation in the polar areas for the benefit of science rather than national prestige and territorial gain. This was followed by IPY-2 (1932-33) and IPY-3 - actually the International Geophysical Year (1957-58) - before the crowning effort of IPY-4 (2007-08). The history of these years is recounted here and explains the political, economic, technical and scientific conditions and expectations that laid the basis for each IPY and which gradually expanded both the scope and extent of our understanding of the complexities in polar regions