antarctica

A general view of the British Antarctic Survey Ship Sir David Attenborough from the helicopter deck on the berth in Harwich, England, Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2022. Britain's polar research ship, named after naturalist David Attenborough, is preparing for its second voyage to Antarctica to investigate sea level rises and threats to marine biodiversity. Credit: AP Photo/Alastair Grant Britain's polar research ship is preparing for its…

CLIMATE SCIENCE Space station carbon mapper faces demise An orbiting fridge-size sensor that uses lasers to map forest structure—key to understanding how much carbon trees sequester—is set to plummet to a fiery destruction in the atmosphere in 2023 unless NASA extends its tenure. Researchers and some U.S. Congress members are lobbying the agency to reconsider its plan to jettison the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) instrument from the International…

It’s not a tremendous amount of melt per square foot. But over an area that’s the size of two large European countries, that scales up. “What we concluded is the melting is really small—it's like a millimeter per year,” says Siegert. “But the catchment is enormous, so you don't need much melting. That all funnels together into this river, which is several hundred kilometers long, and it's three times the rate of flow of the river Thames in London.”That water is under extreme pressure, both because there’s a lot of ice…

Scientists have to factor in all kinds of variables when it comes to predicting ice loss in Antarctica as the world warms up.Now researchers need to take into account a huge river that runs for some 460 kilometers (286 miles) deep beneath the ice; a distance longer than the river Thames that runs through London in the UK.Experts say the newly discovered waterway and its offshoots have the potential to substantially affect the way that the glacial ice above it flows and melts.The researchers behind the discovery used a…

Copernicus Sentinel-2 image of the Halloween Crack in Antarctica. The image was captured on October 25, 2022. Credit: Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2022), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGOIn celebration of Halloween, the European Space Agency (ESA) brings you this recent Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite image of the Halloween Crack in Antarctica.First spotted on October 31, 2016, the Halloween Crack runs from an area of Antarctica known as McDonald Ice Rumples – which is where the underside of the floating…

Credit: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2022), processed by ESA, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO Marking Halloween, we bring you this recent Copernicus Sentinel-2 image of the Halloween Crack in Antarctica. First spotted on 31 October 2016, the Halloween Crack runs from an area known as McDonald Ice Rumples—which is where the underside of the floating ice sheet is…

Credit: polarman/Shuttersock.com Antarctica is so cold that snowfall builds up year after year, resulting in frozen blankets of ice more than 3 km thick in places. You might think that to find the oldest ice, one simply has to dig ever deeper, to find samples at the very bottom that have been trapped for millions of years. …

Elon Musk-run Starlink entered Japan, making it the first Asian country to get SpaceX's affordable satellite internet service.Other than Japan, Starlink currently provides satellite internet access in around 40 countries.Starlink is a constellation of satellites run by SpaceX. After 2023, it also aims to provide global mobile phone service.Read AlsoSpaceX has more than 2,300 operational Starlink satellites in orbit as of September.On the microblogging site Twitter, the SpaceX posted: "Starlink launches service in Japan --…

Adélie penguins need an optimal level of sea ice to breed—too much, and access to food is threatened.Image: Louise Emmerson/Australian Antarctic ProgramAs the fervor of Fat Bear Week rages on, a different corner of the animal kingdom is in trouble: The Antarctic penguin community. Australian researchers studying Adélie penguins point to a plunging population.Researchers from the Australian Antarctic Division’s Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water are reporting a startling dip in the population…

As we're a species with ever-shrinking attention spans, it can be difficult to comprehend just how long life has been around on Earth. However, try to get your head around this one: Scientists have dug up fragments of DNA dating back 1 million years ago.Found beneath the floor of the Scotia Sea, north of the Antarctic, these fragments of organic material can be invaluable in charting the history of the region – mapping out what has lived in the ocean and across what kind of time spans.Technically referred to as sedaDNA –…