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Arctic sea ice heading towards second lowest on record
This year the extent of summer sea ice in the Arctic is heading towards being the second lowest on record. The Arctic sea ice minimum marks the day – typically in mid-September – when sea ice reaches its smallest extent at the end of the summer melt season. British Antarctic Survey sea-ice scientist, Dr Jeremy…
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Glacial retreats linked to oceanic warming
A new study has found for the first time that ocean warming is the primary cause of retreat of glaciers on the Antarctic Peninsula. The Peninsula is one of the largest current contributors to sea-level rise and this new finding will enable researchers to make better predictions of ice loss from this region.The research, by…
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Penguin colonies at risk from erupting volcano
A volcano erupting on a small island in the Sub Antarctic is depositing ash over one of the world’s largest penguin colonies.Zavodovski Island is a small island in the South Sandwich archipelago and its volcano Mt Curry has been erupting since March 2016. The island is home to over one million chinstrap penguins – the…
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Antarctic fossils show creatures wiped out by asteroid
A study of more than 6,000 marine fossils from the Antarctic shows that the mass extinction event that killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago was sudden and just as deadly to life in the Polar Regions.Previously, scientists had thought that creatures living in the southernmost regions of the planet would have been in a…
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New study casts doubt on how much sea levels may rise from the collapse of the Antarctic ice sheet
A new study by scientists in the UK and France has found that Antarctic ice sheet collapse will have serious consequences for sea level rise over the next two hundred years, though not as much as some have suggested.This study, published this week in the journal Nature, uses an ice-sheet model to predict the consequences of…
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Oceanic Phytoplankton contribute to ice formation in clouds
Researchers from the Arctic Research Programme, managed at British Antarctic Survey, have shown for the first time that phytoplankton (plant life) in remote ocean regions can contribute to rare airborne particles that trigger ice formation in clouds.Results published today in the journal Nature show that the organic waste from life in the oceans, which is ejected into the atmosphere…
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New study predicts future Antarctic ice loss
A new international study is the first to use a high-resolution, large-scale computer model to estimate how much ice the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could lose over the next couple of centuries, and how much that could add to sea-level rise. The results paint a clearer picture of West Antarctica’s future than was previously possible.…
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Antarctic life is more diverse than previously thought
The team of scientists, led by Monash University, along with colleagues from the British Antarctic Survey, University of Waikato in New Zealand, and Australian National University, looked at how recent investigations have revealed the continent and surrounding ocean is rich in species. They are also very highly diversified into a variety of distinct ecological regions…
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Antarctic Ice Shelves found to be thinning from the top AND the bottom
A decade-long scientific debate about what’s causing the thinning of one of Antarctica’s largest ice shelves is settled this week (Wednesday 13 May) with the publication of an international study in the journal The Cryosphere.The Larsen C Ice Shelf — whose neighbours Larsen A and B, collapsed in 1995 and 2002 — is thinning from both…
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Antarctic ice loss is accelerating
New research published this week in the journal Science Express describes how the ice shelves around Antarctica are thinning and therefore allowing more of the ice sheet behind them to flow into the sea. Using nearly two decades of satellite data, the team of international researchers observed an acceleration of ice loss from the continent’s ice shelves,…