An internal inquiry by Penn State into the research and scholarly activities of a well-known climate scientist will move into the investigatory stage, which is the next step in the University's process for reviewing research conduct.In looking at four possible allegations of research misconduct against Michael Mann, a committee determined that further investigation is warranted for one of those allegations.

Researchers confirm that surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere were warmer over the last 10 years than any time during the last 1,300 years, and, if the climate scientists include the somewhat controversial data derived from tree-ring records, the warming is anomalous for at least 1,700 years.

When the sun was out and low in the sky, Todd Sowers remembers, standing on the summit was an amazing experience. His goose-down swaddled form, and the similarly bulky shapes of his colleagues, would cast their shadows hundreds of meters down, to the stark landscape of the Bolivian altiplano below. Not that he had much time to contemplate such magnificent vistas. Sunny days were particularly precious on Nevado Sajama, not least because in order to penetrate the mountain's icy cap Sowers and the others were using a solar-powered drill.

In the bestselling Danish novel Smilla's Sense of Snow, the sea ice is primeval, beautiful but deadly, intertwined in human lives in ways mysterious yet real.