Antarctica

Narrow corridors of air loaded with moisture straight from the tropics may be driving a series of ice shelf collapses in the fastest-warming part of Antarctica, scientists have found. Why it matters: Ice shelves act like doorstops, holding back the land-based ice behind them. When they are lost or weakened,…

BIOREMEDIATION Nature Biotechnology volume 40, page 444 (2022)Cite this article 853 Accesses 14 Altmetric Metrics details The next step is to tackle an altogether greater polluter: plastic. The Antarctic Institute’s team is trawling databases in silico and applying metagenomics to identify a new set of local microbial volunteers to deal with this…

YOU'RE HAVIN' A GIRAFFE 22:14, 3 Apr 2022Updated: 22:15, 3 Apr 2022THESE two giraffes are going neck-and-neck with other animals when it comes to the wackiest photos needing double-takes. The duo were snapped looking like they were ­sharing the same body on a safari in Namibia. 5 The giraffe duo…

A group of Finnish, Swedish, and Norwegian geologists provide critical new evidence for the timing of volcanic activity in the Karoo province, the largest of the Jurassic magma systems. The remnants of the province are widespread in southern Africa and Antarctica. Severe environmental crises led to a series of large-scale…

Shattered remains are all that's left of East Antarctica's Conger Ice Shelf, as seen in this image captured on March 23, 2022 by the Landsat 8 satellite. The giant floating slab of ice was more or less intact at the beginning of March but disintegrated in just two weeks. (Credit:…

This undated photo provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in May 2018 shows aurora australis near the South Pole Atmospheric Research Observatory in Antarctica. (Photo: NOAA) A heat wave in Antarctica earlier this month was so extreme that it may be the largest temperature increase above normal…

Satellite data has confirmed that an ice shelf about the size of Manhattan in New York City has completely collapsed in East Antarctica following days of record-high temperatures. The Conger Ice Shelf, which had an approximate surface area of 1,200 square km (463 square miles), collapsed around March 15th, scientists…

February 25, 2022 The long-term trend for sea ice in the south is flat, while the global trend points downward. In February 2022, sea ice around Antarctica reached the lowest extent ever observed since the start of the satellite record in 1979. It marks the first time that the ice…

An iceberg near Antarctica. Credit: Gibran Turner/Getty Images The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. East Antarctica’s Conger ice shelf—a floating platform the size of Rome—broke off the continent on March 15, 2022. Since the beginning of satellite observations in…

It’s been a strange stretch for the icy desert at the bottom of the world.   In mid-March, temperatures in parts of East Antarctica soared 70 degrees Fahrenheit above average. It was high enough for researchers living there to brave the elements for a bare-chested group photo.  The comparably balmy temperatures,…