Arctic & Antarctic

What lies beneath Antarctica’s ice? Lakes, life and the grandest of canyons

Author: Christie Dow, Felicity Graham, Sue Cook

Date: 20th of July 2016

There are few frontiers in the world that can still be said to be unexplored. One of these terra incognita is the land beneath Antarctica’s ice sheets. Buried under kilometres of ice is a fascinating realm of canyons, waterways and lakes, which is only now being mapped in detail. There are more t...

Chasing ice: how ice cores shape our understanding of ancient climate.

Author: Tas van Ommen

Source: The Conversation

Date: 9th of March 2016

It is just over 50 years since French scientist Claude Lorius dropped some glacier ice in his whisky and started a quest that continues today. Lorius was studying glaciers in Antarctica and wondered if the air bubbling out of some ice he had drilled that day might carry information from the past. T...

Antarctica’s clouds are a big mystery to climate scientists

Author: A. Urry

Source: Grist

Date: 6 January

I know what you’re thinking: Clouds can’t possibly be that complicated, right? They’re just a bunch of water vapor hanging out in the atmosphere, and sometimes they leak. Sure, there are a lot of variables at stake: temperature on land and at sea, wind speeds both local and global, humidity, ...

35,000 walrus come ashore in Alaska due to arctic sea ice melt

Author: SBS

Source: SBS

Date: 06 October, 2014

Pacific walrus that can't find sea ice for resting in Arctic waters are coming ashore in record numbers on a beach in northwest Alaska. An estimated 35,000 walrus were photographed on Saturday about eight kilometres north of Point Lay, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminis...

Terrifying Iceberg Collapse Caught On Camera

Author: Leslie Baehr

Source: The Business Insider

Date: 30 July, 2014

Wanda and Rick Stead were out for a boat ride on Tuesday in Newfoundland, Canada when they witnessed the terrifying collapse of an iceberg arch. The crumbling ice triggered a large wave that left the couple fearing for their life as evidenced by Wanda Stead’s horrified screams at 0:24 in the video...

Storms whip up differences in polar sea ice

Author: Anna Salleh

Source: ABC

Date: 12 March, 2014

Frequency of storms could help explain why sea ice is spreading around Antarctica but melting rapidly in the Arctic, say Australian researchers. Melting continental ice shelves in Antarctica could also encourage the growth of sea ice there, adds climate scientist Professor Ian Simmonds from the Un...

So long Sochi: cities set to be too hot to host Winter Olympics

Author: Adeshola Ore

Source: The Conversation

Date: 10 February, 2014

Only six of the previous 19 Winter Olympics host cities would be suitable to host the Games again by the end of this century due to warming temperatures, according to a new analysis. Average February maximum daytime temperatures at the 19 former Winter Olympics host cities have risen from 0.4°C i...

Antarctic moss a charming but chilling sign of warming

Author: John Upton

Source: Grist

Date: 02 September, 2013

A fleecy clump of moss growing on the Antarctic Peninsula might not seem like much of a sight to behold, but it’s a sign of a climate in flux. The patch of Polytrichummoss, sampled in 2008 by scientists at Alexander Island’s Lazarev Bay, either did not exist or was slumbering beneath ice w...

Chain reaction shattered huge Antarctica ice shelf

Author: Jane Qiu

Source: Nature.com

Date: 12 August, 2013

It took decades for global warming to slowly melt the surface of the Larsen B Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula, forming nearly 3,000 lakes. But at the end of the Antarctic summer of 2002, all the lakes drained away in the space of a week. And then the 2,700-square-kilometre ice shelf, which wa...

Arctic ice grows darker and less reflective

Author: Fred Pearce

Source: New Scientist

Date: 06 August, 2013

Arctic ice is losing its reflective sheen. It's common knowledge that each summer, more and more of the ice melts leaving the dark waters of the ocean uncovered – a process that accelerates global warming by reducing the amount of solar radiation reflected back into space. Now it turns out that th...