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CAPE ROYDS, Antarctica — This spit of black volcanic rock that juts out along the coast of Antarctica is an inhospitable place. Temperatures drop below –50 Fahrenheit and high winds cause blinding snowstorms... But if you happen upon the small wooden hut that sits at Cape Royds and wriggled yourself underneath, you'd find a surprise stashed in the foot and a half of space beneath the floorboards. Tucked in the shadows and frozen to the ground are two cases of Scotch whisky left behind 100 years ago by Sir Ernest Shackleton after a failed attempt at the South Pole. Conservators...

And the funny thing is that we've only kept records for 30 years. Townhall also covered this. Marco Tedesco (Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, City College of New York) is the lead author of "An updated Antarctic melt record through 2009 and its linkages to high-latitude and tropical climate variability."

Climate Change: As a Colorado Rockies playoff game is snowed out, scientists report that Arctic sea ice is thickening and Antarctic snow melt is the lowest in three decades. Whatever happened to global warming? Al Gore wasn't there to throw out the first snowball, er, baseball, so he might not have noticed that Saturday's playoff game between the Colorado Rockies and the Philadelphia Phillies was snowed out - in early October. The field should have been snow-free just as the North Pole was to be ice-free this year. It seems that ice at both poles hasn't been paying attention to...

Climate Change: As a Colorado Rockies playoff game is snowed out, scientists report that Arctic sea ice is thickening and Antarctic snow melt is the lowest in three decades. Whatever happened to global warming? Al Gore wasn't there to throw out the first snowball, er, baseball, so he might not have noticed that Saturday's playoff game between the Colorado Rockies and the Philadelphia Phillies was snowed out — in early October. The field should have been snow-free just as the North Pole was to be ice-free this year. It seems that ice at both poles hasn't been paying attention to...

Climate Change: As a winter storm shutters D.C.-area schools, Al Gore does a show-and-tell on global warming before Congress. The road to Copenhagen is being paved with good intentions."When it comes to the weather, folks in Washington don't seem to be able to handle things," a joking President Obama told reporters Wednesday morning. Daughters Malia and Sasha had a snow day as the private school they attend, Sidwell Friends, closed due to a winter ice and snow storm. Truer words were never spoken. When it comes to weather, the current Democratic majorities in the nation's capital don't have a clue....

CHICAGO (AFP) – While a collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet will have devastating impacts on global sea levels, a study published Thursday found the anticipated impact has been seriously overestimated. Using new measures of the ice sheet's geometry, British and Dutch researchers predict its collapse would cause sea levels to rise by 3.2 meters (11 feet) rather than previous estimates of five to seven meters. However, the study published in the journal Science found that even a one meter rise in sea levels would be significant enough to weaken the Earth's gravity field in the southern hemisphere and...

Global Warming is not melting the continental ice cap. Come to find out there’s some shrinkage on the west side, but it’s more than made up by the glacial growth on the east side. But the business of Big Green is already at hand. As the prophet Al Gore said, “The debate is over.” We’ve already pegged the death of the polar bear on the automobile. Public schools are showing children photos of these cute, cuddly, white bears clinging to shrunken ice floes. Now we get to choose which side of Antarctica to believe in. Are you an optimist...

Growing Antarctic sea ice linked to damaged ozone 21 Apr 2009 15:57:10 GMT Source: Reuters * Ozone hole causes Antarctic sea ice to grow * Study helps resolve global warming puzzle By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent OSLO, April 21 (Reuters) - An expansion of sea ice around Antarctica is linked to a hole in the ozone layer high in the atmosphere, according to a study on Tuesday that helps clear up a mystery about global warming. The findings, by scientists at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and the U.S. space agency NASA, explain an apparent contradiction between a thaw of...

Actually, Al Gore is still in denial, but the evidence keeps stacking up. We have had reports of Arctic ice growth in the last year. Of course the 'global warming' theorists claimed this was dramatically offset by Antarctic ice melting. That does not appear to be true. Antarctic ice is growing too according to this Fox News report,If that is not enough evidence, All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously. See graph.

ICE is expanding in much of Antarctica, contrary to the widespread public belief that global warming is melting the continental ice cap. The results of ice-core drilling and sea ice monitoring indicate there is no large-scale melting of ice over most of Antarctica, although experts are concerned at ice losses on the continent's western coast. Antarctica has 90 per cent of the Earth's ice and 80 per cent of its fresh water, The Australian reports. Extensive melting of Antarctic ice sheets would be required to raise sea levels substantially, and ice is melting in parts of west Antarctica. The destabilisation...

ICE is expanding in much of Antarctica, contrary to the widespread public belief that global warming is melting the continental ice cap. The results of ice-core drilling and sea ice monitoring indicate there is no large-scale melting of ice over most of Antarctica, although experts are concerned at ice losses on the continent's western coast. Antarctica has 90 per cent of the Earth's ice and 80 per cent of its fresh water. Extensive melting of Antarctic ice sheets would be required to raise sea levels substantially, and ice is melting in parts of west Antarctica. The destabilisation of the Wilkins...

Willie Soon, a Harvard University astrophysicist and geophysicist with scores of peer-reviewed papers and books to his credit, said he is “embarrassed and puzzled” by the shallow science in papers asserting the Earth faces a climate crisis caused by global warming. Soon told the second International Conference on Climate Change on March in New York City, “We have a system [of peer reviewing scientific literature] that is truly, truly appalling.” Soon’s criticisms echoed an earlier presentation at the 2-1/2-day conference that was attended by about 700 scientists, economists, and policymakers considering the issue of “Global Warming: Was it ever really...

PARIS (AFP) – A Jamaica-sized ice shelf is close to wrenching itself away from Antarctica, following dramatic weakening of an ice "bridge" linking it to the continent, the European Space Agency (ESA) reported Friday. The icy umbilical cord tying the Wilkins Ice Shelf to two islands on the Antarctic peninsula "looks set to collapse," ESA said. The evidence comes from radar pictures taken on Thursday by its Envisat Earth-monitoring satellite, the Paris-based agency said in a press release. Scientists have been keeping a worried eye on this ice shelf for years. For many, it is a barometer of global warming,...

WASHINGTON – New information on Antarctica's regularly melting distant past is giving scientists a glimpse into what may be a flooded future as the planet warms up. The West Antarctic ice sheet collapsed periodically between 3 million and 5 million years ago, adding more than 16 feet to global sea level, according to the first examination of soil cores far below the surface of the Ross ice shelf. Also, new computer models suggest that warmer waters nearby attacked the ice from below, triggering those collapses. Both findings appear in studies published Thursday in the journal Nature. "What we're seeing in...

GENEVA – Antarctic glaciers are melting faster across a much wider area than previously thought, scientists said Wednesday — a development that could lead to an unprecedented rise in sea levels. A report by thousands of scientists for the 2007-2008 International Polar Year concluded that the western part of the continent is warming up, not just the Antarctic Peninsula. Previously most of the warming was thought to occur on the narrow stretch pointing toward South America, said Colin Summerhayes, executive director of the Britain-based Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research and a member of International Polar Year's steering committee. But satellite...

OSLO (Reuters) – Jagged mountains the size of the Alps have been found entombed in Antarctica's ice, giving new clues about the vast ice sheet that will raise world sea levels if even a fraction of it melts, scientists said on Tuesday. Using radar and gravity sensors, the experts made the first detailed maps of the Gamburtsev subglacial mountains, originally detected by Russian scientists 50 years ago at the heart of the East Antarctic ice sheet. "The surprising thing was that not only is this mountain range the size of the Alps, but it looks quite similar to the (European)...

Eco-warriors and media hype aside, the fact is, as we head into 2009, that the world's ice mass has been expanding not contracting. Which will surprise evening news junkies fed a diet of polar bears floating about on ice floes and snow shelves falling into the oceans. But if a whole series of reports on ice growth in the Arctic, the Antarctic and among glaciers are right, then it is truth in the mainstream media (MSM) that's in meltdown not the polar ice caps. The problem for the MSM is that it long ago nailed its colors to the climate...

At least 235 types of cold-loving creatures have been discovered thriving at the bottom of the Arctic and Antarctic seas, puzzling scientists about how they got to both ends of the earth. Until now, the warm tropics have been seen as a barrier keeping polar bears in the Arctic separate from penguins in the Antarctic. Only a few creatures have been known to live in both polar regions, such as long-migrating grey whales or Arctic terns. 'At least 235 species live in both polar seas despite an 11,000-km (6,835 miles) distance in between,' a decade-long international project to map the...

Spinning a "mucus net" off its paddle-like foot-wings to trap algae and other foods, the swimming snail species Limacina helicinia is no bigger than a bean. But the discovery that it and at least 234 other species inhabit both Arctic and Antarctic waters is big news to biologists.

WILKINS ICE SHELF, Antarctica (Reuters) - A huge Antarctic ice shelf is on the brink of collapse with just a sliver of ice holding it in place, the latest victim of global warming that is altering maps of the frozen continent. "We've come to the Wilkins Ice Shelf to see its final death throes," David Vaughan, a glaciologist at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), told Reuters after the first -- and probably last -- plane landed near the narrowest part of the ice. The flat-topped shelf has an area of thousands of square kilometers, jutting 20 meters (65 ft) out...

Daredevil SAS man-turned-explorer Bear Grylls was being airlifted to South Africa last night after being badly injured filming a TV documentary in Antarctica. The 34-year-old adventurer broke his shoulder in a life-threatening fall and was said to be in ‘shock and agony’ from a serious fracture which left the bone protruding from his body. The accident happened at 11pm British time on Friday, and Bear’s insurance company arranged for his evacuation by air ambulance for urgent medical treatment, at an estimated cost of £60,000. Daredevil: Bear Grylls broke his shoulder Bear was injured during the making of his latest daredevil...

A group of isolated Antarctic islands have proved to be unexpectedly rich in life. The first comprehensive biodiversity survey of the South Orkney Islands, near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, has revealed that they are home to more species of sea and land animals than the Galapagos.Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey and the University of Hamburg, Germany, carried out the survey using a combination of trawl nets, sampling as deep as 1500m, and scuba divers. The team found over 1200 species, a third of which were not thought to live in the region. They also identified five new...

Figure of the fossil ostracod from the Dry Valleys. The specimen is less than 1 mm long, but preserves an array of soft tissues including legs and mouth parts. A new fossil discovery- the first of its kind from the whole of the Antarctic continent- provides scientists with new evidence to support the theory that the polar region was once much warmer. The discovery by an international team of scientists is published today (**Embargoed until 00.01 BST Wednesday 23 July**) in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. It involved researchers from the University of Leicester, North Dakota State University,...

PARIS (AFP) - New evidence has emerged that a large plate of floating ice shelf attached to Antarctica is breaking up, in a troubling sign of global warming, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Thursday. Images taken by its Envisat remote-sensing satellite show that Wilkins Ice Shelf is "hanging by its last thread" to Charcot Island, one of the plate's key anchors to the Antarctic peninsula, ESA said in a press release. "Since the connection to the island... helps stabilise the ice shelf, it is likely the breakup of the bridge will put the remainder of the ice shelf...

The newest analysis of trace gases trapped in Antarctic ice cores now provide a reasonable view of greenhouse gas concentrations as much as 800,000 years into the past, and are further confirming the link between greenhouse gas levels and global warming, scientists reported in the journal Nature. They also show that during that entire period of time, there have never been concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane as high as the current levels, said Edward Brook, an associate professor of geosciences at Oregon State University, and author of a Nature commentary on the new studies. "The fundamental conclusion that today's...

Antarctica hasn't warmed as much over the last century as climate models had originally predicted, a new study finds. Climate change's effects on Antarctica are of particular interest because of the substantial amount of water locked up in its ice sheets. Should that water begin to melt, sea levels around the globe could rise and inundate low-lying coastal areas. The new study, detailed in the April 5 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters, marks the first time that researchers have been able to give a progress report on Antarctic climate model projections by comparing climate records to model simulations...

A vast ice shelf hanging on by a thin strip looks to be the next chunk to break off from the Antarctic Peninsula, the latest sign of global warming's impact on Earth's southernmost continent. Scientists are shocked by the rapid change of events. Glaciologist Ted Scambos of the University of Colorado was monitoring satellite images of the Wilkins Ice Shelf and spotted a huge iceberg measuring 25 miles by 1.5 miles (41 kilometers by 2.5 kilometers - about 10 times the area of Manhattan) that appeared to have broken away from the shelf. Scambos alerted colleagues at the British Antarctic...

Krill Discovered Living In The Antarctic AbyssFemale Antarctic krill. Krill have been found living and feeding down to depths of 3,000 meters. (Credit: Image courtesy of British Antarctic Survey) ScienceDaily (Feb. 26, 2008) — Scientists have discovered Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) living and feeding down to depths of 3000 metres in the waters around the Antarctic Peninsula. Until now this shrimp-like crustacean was thought to live only in the upper ocean. The discovery completely changes scientists' understanding of the major food source for fish, squid, penguins, seals and whales. Reporting recently in Current Biology, scientists from British Antarctic Survey (BAS)...

Antarctic may hold the future of archaeology Norman Hammond, Archaeology Correspondent It is a truism that archaeology begins yesterday, and now with only the archaeology of the future to plan for, the discipline has been expanding into areas of the globe where material culture has hitherto played little part. Antarctica is one of these new areas: more than two centuries of human occupation have left plentiful traces. At least five successive and partly overlapping phases of activity can be defined: sealing, whaling, polar exploration, scientific investigation and tourism. Sealing began in the late 18th century, when Captain James Cook’s account...

Scientists have discovered a huge active volcano under Antarctica. - The BAS team says data from the volcano will help it predict future rises in sea-levels caused by melting ice.

PARIS (AFP) - A powerful volcano erupted under the icesheet of West Antarctica around 2,000 years ago and it might still be active today, a finding that prompts questions about ice loss from the white continent, British scientists report on Sunday. The explosive event -- rated "severe" to "cataclysmic" on an international scale of volcanic force -- punched a massive breach in the icesheet and spat out a plume some 12,000 metres (eight miles) into the sky, they calculate. Most of Antarctica is seismically stable. But its western part lies on a rift in Earth's crust that gives rise to...

A Norwegian cruise ship carrying some 300 people lost engine power during an electrical outage and struck an Antarctic glacier, smashing a lifeboat but causing no injuries... The MS Fram hit the ice late Friday near Browns Bluff in the Antarctic... The engine started again and the liner continued to King George Island for an inspection. "We hit a glacier. We have damage to a starboard lifeboat and a little bit forward," ... the ship apparently suffered no serious damage. Hansen said the power outage lasted 40 to 50 minutes and sent the vessel adrift against the glacier, where it...

SANTIAGO, Chile – About 2,500 penguins en route to their Antarctic mating grounds could be sickened by a diesel fuel spill from a cruise boat that struck an iceberg and sank last week, Chilean scientists said Friday. Areas surrounding the mile-long spill site include breeding grounds for Antarctic and Adelia penguins, and the largest mating colony for Papua penguins, said Maria Jose Rosello, a Chilean marine biologist. “The danger is that this fuel spill will impede the journey that species like Papua penguins make at this time of year,” Rosello said. Veronica Vallejos, director of the scientific department at the...

WASHINGTON - Microorganisms locked in Antarctic ice for 100,000 years and more came to life and resumed growing when given warmth and nutrients in a laboratory. Researchers led by Kay Bidle of Rutgers University tested five samples of ice ranging in age from 100,000 years to 8 million years. "We didn't really know what to expect. We knew that microorganisms were really hardy," Bidle, an assistant professor of marine and coastal sciences, said in a telephone interview. The findings are reported in Monday's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers tested samples of the oldest...

Source: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Date: February 15, 2007 NASA Study Reveals Leaks In Antarctic 'Plumbing System' Science Daily — Scientists using NASA satellites have discovered an extensive network of waterways beneath a fast-moving Antarctic ice stream that provide clues as to how "leaks" in the system impact sea level and the world's largest ice sheet. Antarctica holds about 90 percent of the world's ice and 70 percent of the world's reservoir of fresh water. From December 2003 to December 2005, MODIS captured these two images showing a draw down of water in a subglacial lake (left)and the rise of...

Last Update: Friday, February 9, 2007. 1:39pm (AEDT) Two activists missing after confronting Japanese whaling ship It is claimed two anti-whaling activists are missing in the Antarctic after a confrontation with a Japanese whaling ship. The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society's ship Robert Hunter approached the Japanese ship early this morning. Sea Shepherd activists say they attacked the Japanese ship from inflatables with foul-smelling butylic acid. Two Sea Shepherd activists and their Zodiac inflatable are said to be missing. A search effort is under way.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - Everest conqueror and Antarctic explorer Sir Edmund Hillary has returned to the frozen continent — at age 87 — for what he believes will be his last time. Hillary joined New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark and other dignitaries who flew to Antarctica for the 50th anniversary of the Scott Base, which the adventurer helped build in 1957. "This is probably the last opportunity that I will get to visit the wintery south," Hillary said Friday, the day after he arrived. Hillary helped lead a team to the South Pole in 1955. He was the first...

LONDON - Knowing he was days from death on a tragic trek back from the South Pole in 1912, Capt. Robert Falcon Scott wrote to his wife that "we are in a very tight corner and I have doubts of pulling through." However, he assured Kathleen Scott, he faced his end without regret. "How much better it has been than lounging in comfort at home," Scott wrote in the letter, recovered the year after he and his companions died of cold and starvation. Scott's courage in facing his doom — following the bitter disappointment of losing the race to the...

New research into the way the Antarctic ice sheet adds ice to the ocean reveals that tidal motion influences the flow of the one of the biggest ice streams draining the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. This unexpected result shows that the Rutford Ice stream (larger than Holland) varies its speed by as much as 20% every two weeks. Ice streams – and the speed at which they flow – influence global sea level. Understanding their behaviour has been a priority for some time. On average the Rutford Ice Stream moves forward by one metre every day. Reporting this week in...

The Southern Ocean may slow the rate of global warming by absorbing significantly more heat and carbon dioxide than previously thought, according to new research. The Southern Hemisphere westerly winds have moved southward in the last 30 years. A new climate model predicts that as the winds shift south, they can do a better job of transferring heat and carbon dioxide from the surface waters surrounding Antarctica into the deeper, colder waters. The new finding surprised the scientists, said lead researcher Joellen L. Russell. "We think it will slow global warming. It won't reverse or stop it, but it will...

PARIS (Reuters) - A satellite has detected record losses of ozone over Antarctica this year, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Monday, further damaging the shield that protects the Earth from cancer-causing ultraviolet rays. In the past decade, the level of ozone in the Earth's atmosphere has fallen by about 0.3 percent, increasing the risk of skin cancer, cataracts and harm to marine life, ESA added. The presence of a hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic was first recognized in 1985. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said earlier this month that the hole was nearing its record...

GENEVA (Reuters) - The hole over Antarctica's ozone layer is bigger than last year and is nearing the record 29-million-square-km (11-million-sq-mile) hole seen in 2000, the World Meteorological Organization said on Friday. Geir Braathen, the United Nations weather agency's top ozone expert, said ozone depletion had a late onset in this year's southern hemisphere winter, when low temperatures normally trigger chemical reactions that break down the atmospheric layer that filters dangerous solar radiation. "The ozone depletion started quite late, but when it started it came quite rapidly," Braathen told journalists in Geneva. "It (the hole) has now risen to a...

Link Only: Sea levels are rising faster than predicted, warns Antarctic Survey

A new analysis of weather balloon observations from the last 30 years reveals that the Antarctic has the same 'global warming' signature as that seen across the whole Earth, but is three times larger than that observed globally. The results by scientists from British Antarctic Survey are reported this week in Science. Although the rapid surface warming in the Antarctic Peninsula region has been known for some time, this study has produced the first indications of broad-scale climate change across the whole Antarctic continent. Lead author Dr John Turner of the British Antarctic Survey says, "The rapid surface warming of...

The first-ever gravity survey of the entire Antarctic ice sheet, conducted using data from the NASA/German Aerospace Center Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace), concludes the ice sheet's mass has decreased significantly from 2002 to 2005. Isabella Velicogna and John Wahr, both from the University of Colorado, Boulder, conducted the study. They demonstrated for the first time that Antarctica's ice sheet lost a significant amount of mass since 2002. The estimated mass loss was enough to raise global sea level about 1.2 millimeters (0.05 inches) during the survey period, or about 13 percent of the overall observed sea level rise...

GENEVA (Reuters) - The hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica has grown to near record size this year, suggesting 20 years of pollution controls have so far had little effect, the United Nations said on Friday. In a bulletin on the seasonal depletion of ozone gas, which filters harmful ultraviolet radiation that can cause skin cancer and cataracts, the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said the hole would peak within a couple of weeks. "It will probably not break any records, but it shows that ozone depletion is going on and that the so-called ozone recovery has yet to...

The disintegration of the huge Larsen B ice shelf in Antarctica was an unprecedented event in the past 10,000 years of geological history, a study has found. Research by scientists from Hamilton College in New York, based on the scrutiny of six ice cores from the vicinity of the ice shelf, found that a collapse of this size had not happened during the period since the end of the last Ice Age. The piece of ice which sheered away from Larsen B into the sea in 2002 was roughly the size of Luxembourg. The study, published in the journal Nature,...

SYRACUSE, N.Y. - An expansive ecosystem of knee-high mud volcanoes, snowy microbial mats and flourishing clam communities lies beneath the collapsed Larsen Ice Shelf in Antarctica, say researchers. The discovery made in February in a deep glacial trough in the northwestern Weddell Sea was detailed this week in Eos, the weekly newspaper of the American Geophysical Union. Such sunless, cold-vent ecosystems have been found elsewhere — near Monterey, Calif., in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Sea of Japan — but never in Antarctica, the report said. "Seeing those organisms on the ocean bottom, it's like lifting the carpet...

STOCKHOLM (AFP) - A two-week conference on the Antarctic, focusing on environmental, climate change and tourism issues, has opened with representatives of 50 governments, researchers and experts, the Swedish hosts said. The conference, which runs to June 17, comes amid fresh warnings from scientists about the effect of climate change on Antarctica, the fifth largest continent in the world, which contains more than 90 percent of the world's ice. Sweden hopes that the meeting will result in a special protocol on responsibility and insurance in the case of major accidents in the Antarctic, such as oil spills. "It seems that...

Scaremongers shun scientific findings of no global warming May 9, 2005 BY JAY LEHR In early May, newspapers across the country reported that a team of "adventurers" from Minnesota was setting off to "document climate change" at the North Pole. According to newspaper reports, they aim to "draw [attention to] the gradual warming of Earth's climate" and "hope to convince skeptics, especially in the Bush administration, that global warming is real...." In other words, this summer will bring a barrage of misinformation about the Earth's ice structures provided by non-scientists who make casual observations and then claim they know what...