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UrduUniversity of Washington researchers show that the all-time record low in winter sea ice extent in 2023 can be explained by warm Southern Ocean conditions and patterns in the winds that circled Antarctica months earlier, allowing forecasts for sea ice coverage around the South Pole to be generated six or more months in advance. This could support regional and global weather and climate models.
Tag: Antarctica
One or many? Exploring the population groups of the largest animal on Earth
New research shows that Antarctic blue whales are likely a single population, rather than several isolated populations — information that will help conservationists as the whales, the world’s largest animal, try to recover from historic lows due to 20th century whaling.
Texas Tech Researcher Named Station Science Leader for Antarctica Project
Biologist Natasja van Gestel will oversee and coordinate scientific work on behalf of the National Science Foundation.
UC Irvine-Led Team Uncovers ‘Vigorous Melting’ at Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier
A team of glaciologists led by researchers at the University of California, Irvine used high-resolution satellite radar data to find evidence of the intrusion of warm, high-pressure seawater many kilometers beneath the grounded ice of West Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier.
Ocean currents threaten to collapse Antarctic ice shelves
Meandering ocean currents play an important role in the melting of Antarctic ice shelves, threatening a significant rise in sea levels.
New discovery suggests significant glacial retreat in West Antarctica began in 1940s
Among the vast expanse of Antarctica lies the Thwaites Glacier, the world’s widest glacier measuring about 80 miles on the western edge of the continent.
Vitamin B12 adaptability in Antarctic algae has implications for climate change
Vitamin B12 deficiency in people can cause a slew of health problems and even become fatal. Until now, the same deficiencies were thought to impact certain types of algae, as well.
UT-Led Aerial Surveys Reveal Ancient Landscape Beneath East Antarctic Ice Sheet
Long before Antarctica froze over, rivers carved valleys through mountains in the continent’s east. Millions of years later, researchers have discovered a remnant of this ancient highland landscape thanks to an aerial survey campaign led by the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG).
Over 40 percent of Antarctica’s ice shelves reduced in volume over 25 years
71 of the 162 ice shelves that surround Antarctica have reduced in volume over 25 years from 1997 to 2021, with a net release of 7.5 trillion tonnes of meltwater into the oceans, say scientists.
Polar experiments reveal seasonal cycle in Antarctic sea ice algae
New research provides the first measurements of how sea-ice algae and other single-celled life adjust to the dramatic seasonal rhythms in the ocean surrounding Antarctica, offering clues to what might happen as this environment shifts under climate change.
Helicopter-based observations uncover warm ocean flows toward Totten Ice Shelf in Southeast Antarctica
An international team of scientists has successfully conducted large-scale helicopter-based observations along the coast of East Antarctica and has identified pathways through which warm ocean water flows from the open ocean into ice shelf cavities for the first time.
Researchers find Antarctic ice shelves thinner than previously thought
As global ice dams begin to weaken due to warming temperatures, a new study suggests that prior attempts to evaluate the mass of the huge floating ice shelves that line the Antarctic ice sheet may have overestimated their thickness.
Climate change: Emperor penguin breeding fails due to Antarctic sea ice loss
Four out of five emperor penguin colonies in the Bellingshausen Sea, Antarctica, saw no chicks survive to fledge successfully in the spring of 2022, reports a study published in Communications Earth & Environment.
New Antarctic extremes ‘virtually certain’ as world warms
Extreme events in Antarctica such as ocean heatwaves and ice loss will almost certainly become more common and more severe, researchers say.
Penguins, Robots, The Ocean and more
Climate change researchers from the University of Delaware are among those in Antarctica conducting fieldwork on penguins, ocean currents and glaciers
Current Antarctic conservation efforts are insufficient to avoid biodiversity declines
Existing conservation efforts are insufficient to protect Antarctic ecosystems, and population declines are likely for 65% of the continent’s plants and wildlife by the year 2100, according to a study publishing December 22nd in the open access journal PLOS Biology.
Back to Antarctica with SPIDER
In the next few weeks, a team led by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will fly an instrument called SPIDER. They are looking for a pattern, or polarization, in the earliest light we can measure.
Climate change may be culprit in Antarctic fish disease outbreak
Climate change might be behind an unusual disease outbreak among Antarctic fish. For about a decade, University of Oregon biologists John Postlethwait and Thomas Desvignes have been visiting the West Antarctic Peninsula. They study a unique group of fish that has adapted to the harsh polar environment. But on a 2018 field excursion, they noticed something especially strange: a large number of those fish were afflicted with grotesque skin tumors.
Geoscientists to study structure and properties of Antarctic lithosphere
Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis received a grant from the National Science Foundation to determine the thermal and compositional structure of Antarctica using seismic, gravity and topography data and petrological modeling.
Direct measurement of optical properties of glacier ice using a photon-counting diffuse LiDAR
Physicists from the University of Oregon’s Oregon Center for Optical Molecular and Quantum Science along with glaciologists from the Department of Geography as well as the Oregon Glacier Institute spent the last year developing a new measurement technique to investigate…
Tectonic shift in Southern Ocean caused dramatic ancient cooling event
New research has shed light on a sudden cooling event 34 million years ago, which contributed to formation of the Antarctic ice sheets.
Researchers and citizen scientists complete first-ever Weddell seal count
A research team led by the University of Minnesota Twin Cities has completed a first-ever global population estimate of Weddell seals in Antarctica, showing that there are significantly fewer seals than previously thought. Documenting the seals’ population trends over time will help scientists better understand the effects of climate change and commercial fishing.
Ozone pollution has increased in Antarctica
Researchers reporting in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology have analyzed more than 25 years of Antarctic data, finding that ozone concentrations near the ground arose from both natural and human-related sources.
South Pole and East Antarctica warmer than previously thought during last ice age, two studies show
University of Washington glaciologists are co-authors on two papers that analyzed Antarctic ice cores to understand the continent’s air temperatures during the most recent glacial period. The results help understand how the region behaves during a major climate transition.
Pandemic-era paleontology: A wayward skull, at-home fossil analyses and a first for Antarctic amphibians
Researchers at the University of Washington have discovered the first fossil evidence of an ancient amphibian, Micropholis stowi, from Antarctica. Micropholis lived in the Early Triassic, shortly after Earth’s largest mass extinction. It was previously known only from fossils in South Africa.
Antarctica remains the wild card for sea-level rise estimates through 2100
A massive collaborative research project covered in the journal Nature this week offers projections to the year 2100 of future sea-level rise from all sources of land ice, offering the most complete projections created to date.
Catastrophic Sea-Level Rise from Antarctic Melting is Possible with Severe Global Warming
The Antarctic ice sheet is much less likely to become unstable and cause dramatic sea-level rise in upcoming centuries if the world follows policies that keep global warming below a key 2015 Paris climate agreement target, according to a Rutgers coauthored study. But if global warming exceeds the target – 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) – the risk of ice shelves around the ice sheet’s perimeter melting would increase significantly, and their collapse would trigger rapid Antarctic melting. That would result in at least 0.07 inches of global average sea-level rise a year in 2060 and beyond, according to the study in the journal Nature.
Antarctic peninsula likely to warm over next two decades
An analysis of historic and projected simulations from 19 global climate models shows that, because of climate change, the temperature in the Antarctic peninsula will increase by 0.5 to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2044.
New Study Identifies Atmospheric Rivers as Contributor to Increased Snow Mass in West Antarctica
A new study published today in the journal Geophysical Research Letters used NASA’s ice-measuring laser satellite to identify atmospheric river storms as a key driver of increased snowfall in West Antarctica during the 2019 austral winter.
Antarctica’s ice melt isn’t consistent, new analysis shows
Antarctic ice is melting, contributing massive amounts of water to the world’s seas and causing them to rise – but that melt is not as linear and consistent as scientists previously thought, a new analysis of 20 years’ worth of satellite data indicates.
NSF-funded deep ice core to be drilled at Hercules Dome, Antarctica
Antarctica’s next deep ice core, a 1.5-mile core reaching back to 130,000-year-old ice, will be carried out by a multi-institutional U.S. team led by UW’s Eric Steig. The site hundreds of miles from today’s coastline could provide clues to the most recent collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
New Clues Shed Light On Importance Of Earth’s Ice Sheets
Study Stems from Antarctic Expedition to Drill Through Glaciers
Atmospheric Rivers Help Create Massive Holes in Antarctic Sea Ice
Warm, moist rivers of air in Antarctica play a key role in creating massive holes in sea ice in the Weddell Sea and may influence ocean conditions around the vast continent as well as climate change, according to Rutgers co-authored research. Scientists studied the role of long, intense plumes of warm, moist air – known as atmospheric rivers – in creating enormous openings in sea ice. They focused on the Weddell Sea region of the Southern Ocean near Antarctica, where these sea ice holes (called polynyas) infrequently develop during the winter.
South Pole Warmed More Than Three Times Global Rate in 30 Years
New Brunswick, N.J. (June 29, 2020) – The South Pole warmed more than three times the global rate from 1989 to 2018 – a record period of warming, according to a Rutgers coauthored study in the journal Nature Climate Change.…
Antarctic sea-ice models improve for the next IPCC report
A study of 40 sea ice models finds they all project that the area of sea ice around Antarctica will decrease by 2100, but the amount of loss varies between the emissions scenarios.
Virginia Tech research provides new explanation for neutrino anomalies in Antarctica
A new research paper co-authored by a Virginia Tech assistant professor of physics provides a new explanation for two recent strange events that occurred in Antarctica – high-energy neutrinos appearing to come up out of the Earth on their own accord and head skyward.
More protections needed to safeguard biodiversity in the Southern Ocean
Current marine protected areas in the Southern Ocean need to be at least doubled to adequately safeguard the biodiversity of the Antarctic, according to a new CU Boulder study.
East Antarctica’s Denman Glacier has retreated almost 3 miles over last 22 years
Irvine, Calif., March 23, 2020 – East Antarctica’s Denman Glacier has retreated 5 kilometers, nearly 3 miles, in the past 22 years, and researchers at the University of California, Irvine and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are concerned that the shape of the ground surface beneath the ice sheet could make it even more susceptible to climate-driven collapse.
Greenland shed ice at unprecedented rate in 2019; Antarctica continues to lose mass
Irvine, Calif., March 18, 2020 – During the exceptionally warm Arctic summer of 2019, Greenland lost 600 billion tons of ice, enough to raise global sea levels by 2.2 millimeters in two months. On the opposite pole, Antarctica continued to lose mass in the Amundsen Sea Embayment and Antarctic Peninsula but saw some relief in the form of increased snowfall in Queen Maud Land, in the eastern part of the continent.
Almost Alien: Antarctic Subglacial Lakes are Cold, Dark and Full of Secrets
More than half of the planet’s fresh water is in Antarctica. While most of it is frozen in the ice sheets, underneath the ice pools and streams of water flow into one another and into the Southern Ocean surrounding the continent. Understanding the movement of this water, and what is dissolved in it as solutes, reveals how carbon and nutrients from the land may support life in the coastal ocean.
Ultra-high energy events key to study of ghost particles
Physicists at Washington University in St. Louis have proposed a way to use data from ultra-high energy neutrinos to study interactions beyond the standard model of particle physics. The ‘Zee burst’ model leverages new data from large neutrino telescopes such as the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica and its future extensions.
SuperTIGER on its second prowl — 130,000 feet above Antarctica
A balloon-borne scientific instrument designed to study the origin of cosmic rays is taking its second turn high above the continent of Antarctica three and a half weeks after its launch. SuperTIGER (Super Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder) is designed to measure the rare, heavy elements in cosmic rays that hold clues about their origins outside of the solar system.
Undersecretary for Science Paul Dabbar Recently Visited the South Pole Telescope in Antarctica
The South Pole Telescope is one of the tools scientists are using to understand the earliest history of our universe. To check out the Department of Energy’s (DOE) investment in this project, DOE Undersecretary for Science Paul Dabbar visited the facility last week.
Tip of the ICEBERG: Planetary scientists developing large-scale ‘imagery-computing superhighway’
Northern Arizona University assistant professor Mark Salvatore and doctoral student Helen Eifert are working on an NSF-funded project to analyze data across the frozen landscape of Antarctica, which will eventually help scientists produce detailed geologic maps of the Lower Colorado River Corridor.
Barrels of ancient Antarctic air aim to track history of rare gas
An Antarctic field campaign last winter led by the U.S. and Australia has successfully extracted some of the largest samples of air dating from the 1870s until today. Researchers will use the samples to look for changes in the molecules that scrub the atmosphere of methane and other gases.
UCI-led team releases high-precision map of Antarctic ice sheet bed topography
Irvine, Calif., Dec. 12, 2019 – A University of California, Irvine-led team of glaciologists has unveiled the most accurate portrait yet of the contours of the land beneath Antarctica’s ice sheet – and, by doing so, has helped identify which regions of the continent are going to be more, or less, vulnerable to future climate warming.
Antarctic ice sheets could be at greater risk of melting than previously thought
Antarctica is the largest reservoir of ice on Earth – but new research by the University of South Australia suggests it could be at greater risk of melting than previously thought.
Tulane scientist embarks on mission to Florida-sized glacier
Geologist Brent Goehring is joining researchers from across the U.S. and the U.K. to research sea-level rise
Reframing Antarctica’s Meltwater Pond Dangers to Ice Shelves and Sea Level
Meltwater ponds riddle a kilometer-thick ice shelf, which then shatters in just weeks, shocking scientists and speeding the flow of the glacier behind it into the ocean to drive up sea level. A new study puts damage by meltwater ponds to ice shelves and sea level into cool, mathematical perspective.
Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists Announces 2019 National Laureates
An ecologist from Stony Brook University, a theoretical physicist from University of Colorado Boulder and a chemical biologist from Harvard University Three female scientists have been named Laureates of the Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists, each receiving $250,000, the…