Category Archives: Antarctica

Tropical Cyclone Damien brings heavy rain to Western Australia

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Elsewhere in the country rainfall offered relief from the bushfires, but caused flash flooding as well

Tropical Cyclone Damien made landfall in Western Australia over the weekend and lashed north-western parts of Australia with heavy rain and damaging winds. Unrelated to the cyclone, eastern Australia also recently had some substantial rainfall totals. While rain came as welcome relief after the severe bushfires, flash floods have now swept across the region.

Storm Hervé marked the end of unseasonable warmth across parts of France and Germany last week as the system brought a cooler airmass, strong winds, and fresh, heavy snowfall to the Alps. Prior to this, south-west Europe as a whole was experiencing exceptional heat, and temperatures rocketed to 29.6C in Valencia in Spain on Tuesday, setting a new all-time February record.

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Alarm over collapse of chinstrap penguin numbers

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Global heating suspected to be behind sharp decline in populations across Antarctic islands

Colonies of chinstrap penguins have fallen by more than half across islands in Antarctica, prompting scientific concern that “something is broken” in the world’s wildest ecosystem.

After more than a month counting chicks in the South Shetland Islands, researchers suspect global heating is behind the sharp fall in numbers of the distinctive birds, which get their name from a black line that runs below the beak from cheek to cheek.

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Antarctica logs hottest temperature on record with a reading of 18.3C

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A new record set so soon after the previous record of 17.5C in March 2015 is a sign warming in Antarctica is happening much faster than global average

Antarctica has logged its hottest temperature on record, with an Argentinian research station thermometer reading 18.3C, beating the previous record by 0.8C.

The reading, taken at Esperanza on the northern tip of the continent’s peninsula, beats Antarctica’s previous record of 17.5C, set in March 2015.

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Submarine to explore why Antarctic glacier is melting so quickly

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Scientists reach remote Thwaites glacier, vanishing at increasing rate, for mission

An international team of scientists has reached the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica and is preparing to drill through more than half a kilometre of ice into the dark waters beneath.

The 600-metre deep borehole will allow researchers to lower down a torpedo-shaped robotic submarine that will explore the underside of the ice shelf to better understand why it is melting so fast.

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Chilean air force chief says cause of Antarctic plane crash may never be known

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Investigators may never recover enough wreckage to know why the Hercules crashed, killing 38

The commander-in-chief of the Chilean air force has said that the struggle to recover the remains of a Hercules that crashed en route to the Antarctic two weeks ago could make it difficult to ever determine what happened to the plane.

The Hercules C-130 cargo plane, which was carrying 17 crew and 21 passengers, disappeared shortly after taking off on 9 December from the southern city of Punta Arenas in Chilean Patagonia.

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‘I was peeing and a polar bear popped up!’ Secrets of Seven Worlds, One Planet

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Shooting poachers, circling polar bears, flailing four-tonne seals, singing rhinos and the world’s worst sea … the team behind Attenborough’s latest extravaganza relive their thrills and spills

Chadden Hunter, producer, North America and South America

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Antarctic marine park: conservationists frustrated after protection bid fails for eighth time

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Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources unable to agree on plan backed by Australia, France and EU

Conservationists have expressed frustration that an international commission for protecting marine life in Antarctica has failed for the eighth consecutive time to create a marine park across 1 million sq km on the continent’s east.

Members of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) could not agree on the proposal, backed by Australia, France and the EU, that would have protected habitat for penguins, seals, whales and seabirds.

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Crew for troubled polar tour firm say they haven’t been paid in months

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Canada-based One Ocean Expeditions cancelled recent trip to Antarctica after it was unable to purchase sufficient fuel

An adventure travel company that charges upwards of US$20,000 for a single trip to polar regions has failed to pay many of its contractors in nearly a year, leaving some unable to cover living expenses, according to current and former crew.

Related: Polar cruise boom harming the Arctic, explorer warns

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City-sized iceberg separates from Antarctic ice shelf – video

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A gigantic iceberg has broken away from the Amery ice shelf in east Antarctica. The tabular iceberg, officially named D28, is 1,636 square kilometres in size, or about 50 x 30 kilometres -  the size of greater London or greater Sydney. It separated from the ice shelf last week, on 26 September but scientists said it was not related to climate change

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Dreaming of Antarctica: where beauty and fragility meet

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Rona Mcseveny, a former patient of UCHL, is showcasing her photos of the continent at the hospital’s Street Gallery. The exhibition is a thank-you to the NHS for the treatment she received. Below, she details the spellbinding sights she captured on her trip

  • Dreaming of Antarctica is at the Street Gallery from 18 July to 4 September 2019
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Glacial melting in Antarctica may become irreversible

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Thwaites glacier is likely to thaw and trigger 50cm sea level rise, US study suggests

Antarctica faces a tipping point where glacial melting will accelerate and become irreversible even if global heating eases, research suggests.

A Nasa-funded study found instability in the Thwaites glacier meant there would probably come a point when it was impossible to stop it flowing into the sea and triggering a 50cm sea level rise. Other Antarctic glaciers were likely to be similarly unstable.

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The changing landscape of the Antarctic – in pictures

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Sam Edmond, an Antarctic tour guide and photographer, took these images from a helicopter along the Eastern coastline between Cape Adare and the Cooperation Sea during summer. The continent’s vastness and the scale of the climate challenge it faces is palpable from up above. Across both polar regions, ice cover has become an important way to measure the impact of global warming, and the risk and logistical complications of operating aircraft around the Antarctic mean that perspective is both rare and valuable

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‘Precipitous’ fall in Antarctic sea ice since 2014 revealed

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Plunge is far faster than in Arctic and may lead to more global heating, say scientists

The vast expanse of sea ice around Antarctica has suffered a “precipitous” fall since 2014, satellite data shows, and fell at a faster rate than seen in the Arctic.

The plunge in the average annual extent means Antarctica lost as much sea ice in four years as the Arctic lost in 34 years. The cause of the sharp Antarctic losses is as yet unknown and only time will tell whether the ice recovers or continues to decline.

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‘Extraordinary thinning’ of ice sheets revealed deep inside Antarctica

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New research shows affected areas are losing ice five times faster than in the 1990s, with more than 100m of thickness gone in some places

Ice losses are rapidly spreading deep into the interior of the Antarctic, new analysis of satellite data shows.

The warming of the Southern Ocean is resulting in glaciers sliding into the sea increasingly rapidly, with ice now being lost five times faster than in the 1990s. The West Antarctic ice sheet was stable in 1992 but up to a quarter of its expanse is now thinning. More than 100 metres of ice thickness has been lost in the worst-hit places.

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Japan’s war on whales isn’t over – the Australian government must keep fighting | Darren Kindleysides

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Australia’s global leadership on whale conservation will be tested as Japanese hunters move to a different hemisphere

Japan’s whaling fleet arrived back at the port of Shimonoseki on the weekend with a barbaric tally of 333 dead whales that are no longer swimming freely in the Southern Ocean.

If the work of the Japanese whalers is anything like last year, more than 100 pregnant females and 50 or so juveniles will have been killed. But from now on, things are different.

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Iceberg twice the size of New York City is set to break away from Antarctica

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Once a rapidly spreading rift intersects with another fissure, an iceberg of at least 660sq miles is set to be loosened, Nasa says

An iceberg roughly twice the size of New York City is set to break away from an Antarctic ice shelf as a result of a rapidly spreading rift that is being monitored by Nasa.

A crack along part of the Brunt ice shelf in Antarctica first appeared in October 2016, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa). The crack is spreading to the east. This rift, known as a Halloween crack, is set to intersect with another fissure that was apparently stable for the past 35 years but is now accelerating north at a rate of around 2.5 miles a year.

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Search for Shackleton’s Endurance called off after loss of submarine

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Weddell Sea expedition team loses contact with autonomous vehicle under ice sheet

The search for Sir Ernest Shackleton’s lost ship, Endurance, has been called off after extreme weather trapped an underwater vehicle under a sheet of ice.

Explorers working on the Weddell Sea Expedition had hoped to find the Antarctic explorer’s vessel, which was crushed by ice and sank in 1915 during his ultimately unsuccessful attempt at a land crossing of the continent. But severe weather closed in and the sea ice conditions led to the loss of the team’s specialist autonomous underwater vehicle, the AUV7.

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Cavity two-thirds the size of Manhattan discovered under Antarctic glacier

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Disintegration of rapidly melting Thwaites ice mass could threaten coastal communities worldwide

Scientists have discovered a giant cavity at the bottom of a disintegrating glacier in Antarctica, sparking concerns that the ice sheet is melting more rapidly than expected.

Researchers working as part of a Nasa-led study found the cavern, which they said was 300 metres tall and two-thirds the size of Manhattan, at the bottom of the massive Thwaites glacier.

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