The research team's temperature analysis showed that summer temperatures in the Arctic, in step with the reduced energy from the Sun (related to an approximately 21, 000-year cyclical wobble in Earth's tilt relative to the Sun), cooled at an average rate of about 0.2 degrees Celsius per thousand years.

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But Mr Lurie and his team delicately reduce the temperature, separating the aggressive men from the rest of the crowd.

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Every movement, sound and temperature change will be recorded and analysed before the team presents its findings to the Royal Navy.

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By studying the core's rocks and fossils, the team has been learning about the past temperature and behaviour of Antarctica's massive ice sheets.

ECONOMIST: The South Pole as location and metaphor

But by the Berkeley team's analysis, the global temperature correlates more closely with the state of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) index - a measure of sea surface temperature in the north Atlantic.

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More than 1, 000 readers vote each day on the blog's temperature-taking survey about the perceived prospects of the team, said blogger Mike Axisa.

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An international team has now published details of an efficient, low-temperature method for generating it from methanol.

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The team hopes that understanding how the ice sheets have responded to subtle increases in temperature in the past will provide important clues to what they'll do in the future.

ECONOMIST: The South Pole as location and metaphor