It is no secret that climate change is transforming the polar regions. Retreating glaciers, melting ice-caps and changing sea ice patterns are frequently reported in both the Arctic and Antarctic, and…
This winter there was more sea ice than ever in Antarctica.
Flickr/august allen
Recently NASA reported that this year’s maximum wintertime extent of Antarctic sea ice was the largest on record, even greater than the previous year’s record. This is understandably at odds with the public’s…
Alexis Webb, National Institute for Medical Research
As a researcher funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF), since October 1, I’ve known that I will be not be receiving my monthly fellowship. This has meant that my work, investigating genes…
Imagine a lake so salty its water exists in a liquid state at -20 °C – then picture something thriving in that seemingly lethal environment. Such an organism exists; several of them, in fact. In a paper…
Melting ice, growing ice, and shifting acidity: what the future holds for the great white south.
AAP Image/Dean Lewins
The general thrust of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report - released on Friday – can be summarised as: “there is now more evidence that climate change is occurring”. Antarctica and the Southern Ocean are…
That extreme lifeforms might exist in the cold and dark lakes hidden kilometres beneath the Antarctic ice sheet has fascinated scientists for decades. Understanding how life can exist in the most extreme…
Although it is far from the power stations, roads and flight paths of the populated world, the Southern Ocean is already responding to climate change. Average sea temperatures in some parts have risen…
Lack of funding is just the tip of the iceberg for Australian Antarctic research.
AAP/Australian Antarctic Division
A hundred years after Australian explorer and geologist Douglas Mawson returned from his epic scientific adventures in Antarctica, Australia’s scientific exploration of the icy southern continent has all…
Are Jack Sparrow’s diaries in there somewhere?
Jurriaan Persyn
New research has shown that the Southern Ocean near Antarctica is filled with whale bone-eating worms, but it lacks wood-eating marine fauna, which are found everywhere else in the world’s oceans. This…
Antarctic warming began at least two, and perhaps four, millennia earlier than previously thought, the study found.
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
The Antarctic warming that signalled the beginning of the last ice age melt may have actually started between between two and four millennia earlier than previously thought, a new study has found. Previously…
Russia blocked the approval of new marine protected areas in the Antarctic this week, demanding more scientific information and a definition of marine protected areas. The surprise move postpones a joint…
The emperor penguin: walking isn’t exactly its speciality, but you should see it swim.
Uli Junz
Penguins can move underwater with the speed of a swallow or swift, but cannot fly even as far as a chicken. How did a bird that in some cases shuffles 40 miles to its breeding grounds on unsuitable flippers…
Two papers released last week in the journal Nature Geoscience provide evidence that warming and melt in West Antarctica are occurring at levels that are highly unusual compared to natural variability…
Distinguished Professor and Deputy Director of ARC Securing Antarctica's Environmental Future (SAEF), University of Wollongong, University of Wollongong