Swan remembers a pact he made one very cold day on route to the South Pole.

VOA: standard.2009.12.10

Dr Carlstrom and his colleagues propose building an eight-metre-diameter radio telescope at the South Pole to search for such cold spots.

ECONOMIST: Cosmology

When the Arctic Oscillation turns negative, that is, when the winds weaken, the cold air normally trapped around the North Pole surges south.

FORBES: 2011 Forecast: World Outperforms U.S., Europe Scuttles

This pole-centred roundel of warm-in-cold is symptomatic of what climatologists call the negative phase of the Arctic oscillation (AO).

ECONOMIST: Britain��s cold snap is explained by the Arctic oscillation