All posts tagged: Antarctic

Warmer ocean is driving the Antarctic sea ice ‘regime shift’

Warmer ocean is driving the Antarctic sea ice ‘regime shift’

Published by skeptic

Antarctic sea ice extent has reached record lows in recent years Sebnem Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images Scientists have been debating why Antarctic sea ice, which once seemed impervious to climate change, has shrunk dramatically in the past decade. Now research suggests stronger winds have churned up warming water from the deep ocean, breaking through upper water layers that were protecting the ice from melt. While Arctic sea ice has declined about 40 per cent over four decades, until recently the sea ice around Antarctica was slightly expanding, confounding most climate models. Then after 2015 ice extent fell from a record high to several record lows, losing an area the size of Greenland. Some research has suggested the sea ice may be melting largely due to air temperatures, which have been so high in recent years that Antarctic researchers have posed for photos in swimwear. Two new studies make the case that ocean warming played a bigger role in this “regime shift”. “Plenty of people will say… that it was atmospheric warming which melted the …

Three million years of climate history, captured in Antarctic ice

Three million years of climate history, captured in Antarctic ice

Published by Jenni Sidey

Frozen air from Antarctica is giving scientists a longer look at a climate mystery that has lingered for decades: why Earth cooled so much over the past 3 million years even though its greenhouse gas levels seem to have changed only modestly. Two new studies in Nature push direct records of ancient atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane far beyond the 800,000-year span covered by the oldest continuous ice core. Using ice from Allan Hills, an unusual blue ice area at the edge of East Antarctica, researchers found that average carbon dioxide levels likely stayed below 300 parts per million over the past 3 million years. Methane, meanwhile, appears to have remained roughly steady at about 500 parts per billion. That is a striking result because the same ice suggests the planet cooled a great deal over the same stretch of time. “The noble gases in ice provide a unique way to look at ocean temperature change,” Sarah Shackleton, now a professor at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said in one of the papers. “Other methods can …

Global first: A massive sleeper shark was filmed in cold Antarctic waters

Global first: A massive sleeper shark was filmed in cold Antarctic waters

Published by Jenni Sidey

A bulky shape drifted through dim water nearly half a kilometer below the Antarctic surface, moving slowly over a pale seabed. At first glance, it looked like something familiar. Then the realization landed. It was a shark, filmed in a place where many scientists assumed sharks did not live at all. The encounter happened in January 2025, when a deep-sea camera recorded a sleeper shark near the South Shetland Islands, off the Antarctic Peninsula. The animal measured an estimated 3 to 4 meters long, roughly 10 to 13 feet. Water temperatures at that depth hovered just above freezing. Alan Jamieson, founding director of the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre at the University of Western Australia, said the sighting broke a long-standing rule of thumb. “We went down there not expecting to see sharks because there’s a general rule of thumb that you don’t get sharks in Antarctica,” Jamieson said. “And it’s not even a little one either. It’s a hunk of a shark. These things are tanks.” Researchers from the University of Western Australia have captured …

228-meter sediment core may predict future Antarctic ice sheet loss

228-meter sediment core may predict future Antarctic ice sheet loss

Published by Jenni Sidey

A tube of mud can look like nothing special at first. Pull it from half a kilometer under Antarctic ice, though, and every smear starts to read like a diary. That is what an international team brought up at Crary Ice Rise, a grounded ice dome at the inner edge of the Ross Ice Shelf. After drilling through 523 meters of ice, the group recovered a sediment core 228 meters long, made of layered mud, gravel, and rock. By their account, it is far longer than any sediment core previously drilled from beneath an ice sheet, where earlier efforts were under 10 meters. The aim is blunt and unsettling. If the West Antarctic Ice Sheet were to melt completely, global sea level would rise about four to five meters. Scientists already track the region with satellites and with records taken near the ice sheet, under floating ice shelves, and in the Ross Sea and Southern Ocean. What has been missing is a direct, continuous archive from the ice-sheet margin itself during earlier warm climates, the …

Weakening ice shelf has caused crucial Antarctic glacier to accelerate

Weakening ice shelf has caused crucial Antarctic glacier to accelerate

Published by skeptic

Giant icebergs have been breaking off the edge of Pine Island ice shelf NASA/Brooke Medley A large and fast-melting glacier in West Antarctica has sped up dramatically since 2017. This may be a sign that the floating ice shelf in front of it is no longer helping to hold back the ice. Pine Island glacier is the fastest-flowing glacier in Antarctica and the largest contributor to sea-level rise of all Antarctic glaciers. It is a key part of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which holds enough ice to raise the global sea level by 5.3 metres if melted completely. The Pine Island ice shelf lies in front of the glacier and juts out over the ocean. It is thought to play a crucial role in holding back the inland ice and shielding it from warm water, buttressing an amount of ice equivalent to 51 centimetres of sea-level rise. The instability of Pine Island glacier and the neighbouring Thwaites glacier, nicknamed the Doomsday glacier, poses a major threat to the long-term viability of the broader West …

Explore job opportunities in Antarctica with the British Antarctic Survey

Explore job opportunities in Antarctica with the British Antarctic Survey

Published by Sam Flores

The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) is hiring workers for its research bases in Antarctica, including chefs, plumbers, doctors, and more. Rothera and Halley VI stations are looking for various staff to support operations. Applicants must be fit, and certain medical conditions like diabetes are not suitable for the harsh environment. BAS is advertising positions on its website and will hold an open day in March. Keywords for this article Source link

Researchers find Antarctic penguin breeding is heating up sooner : NPR

Researchers find Antarctic penguin breeding is heating up sooner : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

FILE – Adelie penguins stand on a block of floating ice at Yalour Islands in Antarctica, Nov. 24, 2025. Mark Baker/AP hide caption toggle caption Mark Baker/AP WASHINGTON — Warming temperatures are forcing Antarctic penguins to breed earlier and that’s a big problem for two of the cute tuxedoed species that face extinction by the end of the century, a study said. With temperatures in the breeding ground increasing 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius) from 2012 to 2022, three different penguin species are beginning their reproductive process about two weeks earlier than the decade before, according to a study in Tuesday’s Journal of Animal Ecology. And that sets up potential food problems for young chicks. “Penguins are changing the time at which they’re breeding at a record speed, faster than any other vertebrate,” said lead author Ignacio Juarez Martinez, a biologist at Oxford University in the United Kingdom. “And this is important because the time at which you breed needs to coincide with the time with most resources in the environment and this is …

Some Antarctic fish arrange their nests into odd shapes

Some Antarctic fish arrange their nests into odd shapes

Published by skeptic

Antarctica: A continent mostly covered in ice, which sits in the southernmost part of the world. aquatic: An adjective that refers to water. biology: The study of living things. The scientists who study them are known as biologists. egg: A reproductive cell that contains half of the genetic information necessary to form a complete organism. In humans and in many other animals, ovaries produce eggs. When an egg fuses with a sperm, they combine to produce a new cell, called a zygote. This is the first step in the development of a new organism.” footage: (in movies and videos) A term for the uncut or unprocessed motion pictures or video imagery taken by a camera. It takes its name from the fact that it took several feet of film to capture a few seconds of motion-picture photography. imprint: (in animal behavior) A term for process by which a young animal comes to view some other animal (or person or thing) as its parent or trusted caregiver. marine: Having to do with the ocean world or …