Antarctic

Hung-An Tian and Mathijs van Manen (NIOZ Ph.D. student) retrieving NIOZ ultra-clean CTD onboard RV Polarstern. Photo by Sven Pont. Credit: Sven Pont Deep sea and sediments bring iron to Antarctic waters. The iron that fertilizes the waters around Antarctica mostly comes from the deep, upwelling waters and the sediments around the continent. That…

The regular cycle of freezing and thawing of Antarctic sea ice, keeps our planet functioning, regulating global climate and sea-level rise. Credit: Wendy Pyper Data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) have revealed another summer of exceptionally low sea-ice extent around Antarctica. Sea-ice extent around the frozen continent was…

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain As this month marks the third consecutive summer with extremely low sea-ice cover around Antarctica, new statistical research points to fundamental changes taking place in the polar Southern Ocean. Antarctic sea ice reached its summer minimum area of 1.97 million km2 on 18 February, the third lowest on record behind…

The South Pole Telescope’s camera received an upgrade in 2017. An analysis of initial observation data was just published in the journal Physical Review D. Credit: Brad Benson/University of Chicago.Gravitational lensing maps from initial data promise even more detail.Argonne is part of a multi-institutional effort to survey the sky for clues about the origins and nature of our universe.For more than five years, scientists at the South Pole Telescope in Antarctica have been observing the sky with an upgraded camera. The…

The Antarctic ice shelves are in danger of melting. That’s a warning that scientists have spent decades screaming about at the top of their lungs. Despite these warnings, global temperatures continue to rise, leading to more and more issues with the ice shelves. Now, though, an Antarctic ice core has revealed alarming insights into just how quickly the shelves could melt and send sea levels skyrocketing.According to the new research, which was published this month in Nature Geoscience, the West Antarctic Ice…

Research using genetic data from Turquet’s octopus suggests that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapsed during the Last Interglacial period due to modest temperature increases. This discovery highlights the WAIS’s vulnerability to even slight warming, posing significant risks under current climate change trajectories.Genetic studies of an Antarctic octopus reveal that the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) occurred in the Last Interglacial period, approximately 129,000 to 116,000 years ago, during a time when…

Evidence contained within an ice core shows that in one location the West Antarctic ice sheet thinned by 450 meters — that’s more than the height of the Empire State Building — in just under 200 years. Credit: University of Cambridge/British Antarctic SurveyResearchers discovered rapid ice loss in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet 8,000 years ago, signaling potential future risks under global warming.Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the British Antarctic Survey have uncovered the first direct evidence that the…

Evidence contained within an ice core shows that in one location the West Antarctic ice sheet thinned by 450 meters—that's more than the height of the Empire State Building—in just under 200 years. Credit: University of Cambridge/British Antarctic Survey Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the British Antarctic Survey have uncovered the first direct evidence that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet shrunk suddenly and…

Sea ice in the Antarctic Ross Sea, on February 4 of 2018. Credit: Jian Liu The year 2023 stands out as the warmest year on record globally, accompanied by the highest recorded ocean temperatures. Amidst these extreme and unusual climatic conditions, Antarctic sea ice extent (SIE), after breaking the second consecutive satellite-recorded low in February 2023, failed to recover at an average rate in the autumn and winter months.…

Professor Dimitris Evangelinos, first author of the study and member of the Consolidated Research Group on Marine Geosciences of the UB, in an image from the current research campaign in Antarctica. Credit: University of Barcelona The Circumpolar Current works as a regulator of the planet's climate. Its origins were thought to have caused the formation of the permanent ice in Antarctica about 34 million years ago. Now, a study…