Antarctica

The United Nations on Thursday recognised a new record high temperature for the Antarctic continent, confirming a reading of 18.3 degrees Celsius (64.9 degrees Fahrenheit) made last year. The record heat was reached at Argentina’s Esperanza research station on the Antarctic Peninsula on February 6, 2020, the UN’s World Meteorological…

Joyride, a Toronto-based company that provides white label apps, back-end analytics and multimodal fleet management for shared micromobility startups, has raised $3.7 million — seed money that it says will help it reach a greater number of small, local operators.  The company, which operates in more than 160 markets in…

Cliff collapseTall ice cliffs at the edges of ice sheets can collapse under their own weight in spectacular fashion, a process that can considerably hasten ice sheet mass loss. Bassis et al. used a dynamic ice model to demonstrate that this kind of collapse can be slowed either by upstream…

Home News Gentoo and chinstrap penguins hang out on an iceberg Western Antarctic. (Image credit: Steven Kazlowski / Barcroft Media / Getty Images)) The first humans to discover Antarctica weren't seafaring Westerners but rather Polynesians, who found the coldest continent 1,300 years ago, a new study suggests. Researchers in New…

Antarctica’s monster Pine Island Glacier—one of the fastest melting glaciers on the continent—is giving climate scientists new reasons to worry. The trouble has to do with its ice shelf, a frozen ledge at the edge of the Pine Island Glacier. The ice shelf helps stabilize and contain the vast flow…

Home News This iceberg-filled passage, Lemaire Channel, lies in the Southern Ocean. (Image credit: Posnov via Getty Images) The Earth has finally attained popular recognition for its fifth ocean, with a decision by the National Geographic Society to add the Southern Ocean around Antarctica to the four it recognizes already:…

The Pine Island Glacier on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is responsible for more than a quarter of Antarctica's contribution to global sea level rise over the past decades. Now, a new study shows it is more vulnerable to rapid melting than thought, because climate change is weakening its natural…

The waters that move around the Antarctic continent are unique and deserve to have a name, and cartographers at National Geographic have now dubbed that area the Southern Ocean. According to National Geographic Society Geographer Alex Tait: “The Southern Ocean has long been recognized by scientists, but because there was…

Pine Island Glacier ends in an ice shelf that floats in the Amundsen Sea. These crevasses are near the grounding line, where the glacier makes contact with the Antarctic continent. The photo was taken in January 2010 from the east side of the glacier, looking westward. This ice shelf lost…

EnvironmentPlanet PossibleOn World Oceans Day, Nat Geo cartographers say the swift current circling Antarctica keeps the waters there distinct and worthy of their own name: the Southern Ocean. BySarah Gibbens Published June 8, 2021 • 9 min read Those familiar with the Southern Ocean, the body of water encircling Antarctica,…