Antarctica

The route has the same starting point Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen used in 1911, when he became the first to reach the South Pole. O’Brady will trace that history and then go far beyond it. Once he passes the 932-mile mark, every step he takes will be farther than any…

Researchers setting up a drill in the Allan Hills region of Antarctica. This work was supported by the NSF Center for Oldest Ice Exploration, or COLDEX. (Image credit: Photo by Julia Marks Peterson, COLDEX) Scientists have pulled a 6 million-year-old chunk of ice out of Antarctica — the oldest directly…

Please complete security verification This request seems a bit unusual, so we need to confirm that you're human. Please press and hold the button until it turns completely green. Thank you for your cooperation! Press and hold the button If you believe this is an error, please contact our support…

Researchers have discovered 6-million-year-old-ice and air in shallow ice cores drilled in the Allan Hills region of East Antarctica. They speculate that this ancient ice reflects surface snowpack or permafrost that was preserved by the growth of the East Antarctic ice sheet in the Middle to Late Miocene epoch. Ancient…

Climate models have long predicted that global warming would weaken the Southern Ocean's ability to absorb carbon dioxide (CO2). Yet decades of measurements show little sign of this decline. Scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) have now uncovered a likely reason for the surprising stability. Their findings suggest that…

In the early afternoon of Dec. 14, 1911, Roald Amundsen and his crew of four officially became the first men to reach the geographic South Pole. To get there, the Norwegian explorers navigated the interminable snowfields of interior Antarctica, trudging through the harshest climates on earth for 56 days. They…

Please complete security verification This request seems a bit unusual, so we need to confirm that you're human. Please press and hold the button until it turns completely green. Thank you for your cooperation! Press and hold the button If you believe this is an error, please contact our support…

The largest herds of caribou in the world make their homes here. Polar bears give birth to cubs in dens dug into this soil, some of them more than 200 years old. And birds like the Arctic tern fly north every summer, some from as far south as Antarctica, to…

As recently as the 1990s, when the Greenland Ice Sheet and the rest of the Arctic region were measurably thawing under the climatic blowtorch of human-caused global warming, most of Antarctica’s vast ice cap still seemed securely frozen. But not anymore. Physics is physics. As the planet heats up, more…

Please complete security verification This request seems a bit unusual, so we need to confirm that you're human. Please press and hold the button until it turns completely green. Thank you for your cooperation! Press and hold the button If you believe this is an error, please contact our support…