Oceans hold precious resources buried in seabeds and continental shelves. Despite legislations and international bodies upholding the Law of the Seas, fear about restrain of rights has begun to grow in developing nations with technologically advanced countries leading exploitation activities.

Arctic Conventions Climate change, the most significant stress on the Arctic is likely to impact the entire world as climate systems are all intricately linked. The essay attempts to understand the legal mechanisms that are functioning in the region dealing with the many uncertainties in the wake of a warming trend.

The Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) is a complex legal instrument that enlists measures in effect and its associated international instruments. Freedom of scientific research is enshrined in the Treaty and hence the ATS promotes free exchange of scientific information and mandates that observations from Antarctic must be made freely available.

Often termed as the barometer of world climate, the polar region is an area of active debate and research. A few updates on the research front are summarised here.

Carbon dioxide is the most available form of carbon for living organisms and the process by which it is cycled around the ecosystem, quickly or over million years is called the carbon cycle (Fig. 1). Although the amount of carbon dioxide we emit increases year by year, the rate at which the gas accumulates in the atmosphere has slowed. The increase in carbon dioxide has been caused by many factors, but principally through the burning of fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars, and the manufacture of cement. Between them, these account for approximately 80 per cent of the 10 billion tons of carbon we release into the atmosphere each year.

Nitrogen is an element vital to all life processes on Earth . It comprises of 78 per cent of the atmosphere, and is embedded in every living tissue. It is a component of amino acids, proteins and nucleic acids. With the exception of carbon, nitrogen is the most universal element of life.

IPCC Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation, 2011. As emission rates substantially exceed natural removal rates, concentrations of CO2 will continue to increase, which will raise global mean temperature. In the absence of additional climate policies, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projected in 2007 that global average temperature will rise over this century by about 1.1°C to 6.4°C. This range variation arises from uncertainty about the amount of greenhouse gases that will be emitted in the future and from uncertainty about climate sensitivity.

The jigsaw fit, one of the strongest evidences of Continental Drift Theory was propagated by A Wegener in 1912. Although remarked upon way back in 1620, with several scientists believing that the present day continents were the fragmented pieces of preexisting larger landmasses (supercontinents), it was only in the 1920s that the Theory gained prominence.

Earth’s crust is relatively lighter as compared to the denser mantle over which it lies and therefore behaves as if it is floating. Areas of the earth’s crust rise or subside to accommodate added load so that the forces that elevate landmasses balance the forces that depress them.

In recent years it has been possible to explore geological activity on the deep ocean floor. Using a submersible research vessel such as the United States’ Alvin, scientists have been able to make personal visits to deep sea sites rather than merely collecting samples from drilling. One of the most interesting discoveries made was ‘black smokers’ mineral enriched hot springs (or sometimes coloured white instead of black) from active regions of mid-oceanic ridges. They even have their own specially adapted marine animals and may be key sites for the origin of life on Earth.