Antarctica

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,…

Ice core researcher Don Voigt examines an ice core at the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide (WAIS Divide) project. Credit: Photograph by Gifford Wong A study of two methods for reconstructing ancient temperatures has given climate researchers a better understanding of just how cold it was in Antarctica during the…

Antarctic surface temperature and elevation during the Last Glacial Maximum By Christo Buizert, T. J. Fudge, William H. G. Roberts, Eric J. Steig, Sam Sherriff-Tadano, Catherine Ritz, Eric Lefebvre, Jon Edwards, Kenji Kawamura, Ikumi Oyabu, Hideaki Motoyama, Emma C. Kahle, Tyler R. Jones, Ayako Abe-Ouchi, Takashi Obase, Carlos Martin, Hugh…

53 million years ago, Antarctica was a forested wilderness, a lush environment where palm trees took root. Now, more than 97 percent of the world's southernmost continent is covered by ice. The magnificent ice sheet that blankets Antarctica holds 6.4 million cubic miles (27 million cubic kilometers) of frozen water.…