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When the Larsen B Ice Shelf in Antarctica collapsed in 2002, the event appeared to be a sudden response to climate change, and this long, fringing ice shelf in the north west part of the Weddell Sea was assumed to be the latest in a long line of victims of Antarctic summer heat waves linked to Global Warming. However in a paper published in the Journal of Glaciology, Prof. Neil Glasser of Aberystwyth University, working as a Fulbright Scholar in the US, and Dr Ted Scambos of University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Centre now say that the...

Researchers have uncovered a complex subglacial system miles under the ice where rivers larger than the Amazon link a series of "lake districts," which may teem with mineral-hungry microbes. This watery environment may be more than one-and-a-half times the size of the United States, scientists say, which would make it the world's largest wetland... Studinger's research focuses on "recovery lakes," part of a a series of cascading lakes found earlier this year under the ice sheet. The lakes... ebb and flow as they empty into the polar sea. They stay fluid because the ice sheet above acts like a gigantic...

Two men, one with a suspected broken jaw, have been airlifted from the Antarctic's most remote research facility after an incident described as a "drunken Christmas punch-up". The brawl happened at the US-operated Amundsen-Scott South Pole station, located at the heart of the frozen continent. The station, where staff carry out a range of scientific investigations from astrophysics to seismology, is currently being rebuilt in a £76m project. After reports of the fight reached staff at McMurdo station, the headquarters of the US Antarctic Programme, which is located on Ross Island, a US Air Force Hercules was sent to pick...

What was done Monthly surface air temperatures from manned and automatic weather stations along with ship/buoy observations from the high-latitude Southern Hemisphere were used to develop a gridded database with resolution appropriate for applications ranging from spatial trend analyses to climate change impact assessments. The data came from a total of 460 locations in the Southern Hemisphere. Temperatures over land were obtained from 19 manned stations of the World Monthly Surface Station Climatology network, most of which were located in coastal areas of the Antarctic continent, plus 73 stations of the Automated Weather Station network, many of which were situated...

SYDNEY (AFP) - A passenger jet has made a historic landing on a new blue ice runway in Australia's Antarctic territory and regular flights are expected to start within a week, officials said Wednesday. But trips on the Airbus A319 to the Wilkins Runway will be for scientists and research staff only, with no plans to open the airlink to tourists, project manager Charlton Clark told AFP. The runway is four kilometres (2.5 miles) long, 700 metres thick and moves about 12 metres southwest a year because of glacial drift. In the first trial landing on Monday, the plane pulled...

There is frequently discussion of whether or not Antarctica is warming or cooling (and if so, by how much). The image below is a useful addition to the conversation. Click the source link for the full text.

Explanation of MS Explorer's sinking doesn't hold water By Colin Woodard Mon Dec 3, 3:00 AM ET People familiar with the Antarctic tourism industry weren't surprised that a cruise ship sank there. What stunned them was that the ship in question was the MS Explorer, a veteran of the polar cruise ship trade, purpose-built to operate in extreme polar environments, and manned by an experienced crew. That it sank during what appears to have been the most routine of circumstances – cruising through young pack ice in mild weather – has experts scratching their heads. "I'm totally shocked and surprised,"...

A team of international scientists has unveiled a mosaic map of Antarctica compiled from satellite images. The new map allows experts and laypersons alike to observe its majestic landscapes online and in stunning clarity. The Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica (LIMA) is composed of high-resolution images taken from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Landsat 7 satellite between 1999 and 2001. It offers accurate, true-color images of the polar region.

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...

A cold, abrupt end to a honeymoon By: DAVE DOWNEY - Staff Writer Encinitas couple that fled Witch Creek fire returns home after cruise ship sinks off Antarctica ENCINITAS -- Three times since marrying June 11 in a beachside ceremony at La Jolla Cove, Trevor Takayama and Torrey Trust have dodged disaster. In August, the Encinitas couple fled an approaching hurricane while camping in a Costa Rican rain forest, on a summerlong honeymoon tour of Central and South America. In October, the Witch Creek fire forced the newlyweds to evacuate the hilltop three-bedroom home she grew up in, near Manchester...

A team of researchers from NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Science Foundation and the British Antarctic Survey unveiled a newly completed map of Antarctica today that is expected to revolutionize research of the continent's frozen landscape. The Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica is a result of NASA's state-of-the-art satellite technologies and an example of the prominent role NASA continues to play as a world leader in the development and flight of Earth-observing satellites. The map is a realistic, nearly cloudless satellite view of the continent at a resolution 10 times greater than ever before with images captured by...

By Bill Cormier, Associated Press Article Launched: 11/23/2007 08:55:35 PM PST BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - A Canadian cruise ship struck submerged ice off Antarctica and began sinking, but all 154 passengers and crew, Americans and Britons among them, took to lifeboats and were plucked to safety by a passing cruise ship.The entire vessel finally slipped beneath the waves Friday evening, 20 hours after the predawn accident near Antarctica's South Shetland Islands, Chilean navy said.No injuries were reported although passengers reportedly endured subfreezing temperatures for several hours as they waited in bobbing lifeboats for a Norwegian liner that took them to a...

LONDON, England (CNN) -- More than 150 people have abandoned a sinking cruise liner that collided with an iceberg in Antarctic waters, a Chilean navy captain told CNN. The ship sent out a distress call at around 10 p.m. ET Thursday. Passenger ship Explorer reported problems near the South Shetland Islands, south of Argentina. The area is in a sector of Antarctica claimed by the United Kingdom. Capt. Carlos Munita of the Chilean navy said they received a distress call from the Explorer, saying the vessel had hit an iceberg around 10 p.m. ET Thursday. He added a Norwegian rescue...

SANTIAGO, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- An earthquake registering 6.3 on the Richter scale rocked Antarctica at 2031 GMT Friday, the Chilean national TV station reported. According to the survey of the U.S. geological research bureau, the epicenter of the quake was 3,641 kilometers from Punta Arenas, Chile's southern most city. Earthquakes rarely hit Antarctica, and their scales are normally small.

In a story from Sydney covering the Live Earth Gorebasm Concerts, the following picture was included:Caption: Cool start ... scientists from the British research station in Antarctica were the first to kick off the Live Earth concerts with their indie band, Nunatak. Photo: ReutersThere is something odd about this picture, namely that it is the dead of Winter in Antarctica right now. The conditions there right now are perpetual darkness and unbearably cold temperatures. Yet in this photo, it is daylight, and one of the musicians isn't even wearing a hat. Exposed skin is highly susceptible to frostbite at temperatures...

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - An ice sheet in Antarctica that is the world's largest — with enough water to raise global sea levels by 200 feet — is relatively stable and poses no immediate threat, according to new research. While studies of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets show they are both at risk from global warming, the East Antarctic ice sheet will "need quite a bit of warming" to be affected, Andrew Mackintosh, a senior lecturer at Victoria University, said Wednesday. The air over the East Antarctic ice sheet, an ice mass more than 1,875 miles across and...

In an effort to fulfill his promise of a concert on every continent for his “Live Earth” event on July 7 to 8, Al Gore approached the British Antarctic Survey in February to explore the possibility of flying a band in to its Rothera Research Station ... No, he was told, July is mid-winter in Antarctica, and no planes or boats can get in or out.

While much of the world has warmed in a pattern that scientists have linked with near certainty to human activities, the frigid interior of Antarctica has resisted the trend. Now, a new satellite analysis shows that at least once in the last several years, masses of unusually warm air pushed to within 310 miles of the South Pole and remained long enough to melt surface snow across a California-size expanse. The warm spell, which occurred over one week in 2005, was detected by scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA and the University of Colorado, Boulder. Balmy air, with...

Tiny fossils reveal ice history By Jonathan Amos Science reporter, BBC News, Vienna The diatoms appear as glass-like structures in the core Tiny they may be, but fossil diatoms discovered deep under the ocean floor are revealing new details about Antarctica's warmer past. The single-celled algae were pulled up by the Antarctic Geological Drilling (Andrill) Program, which has been operating from the Ross Ice Shelf. Some are new to science; others would normally only be expected in waters with higher temperatures than today. Scientists say the diatoms will help them understand future climate changes. "Andrill's basic aim is to...

The Washington Post has a special feature called Antarctic Voyages. One of the images is an ice tower on Erebus formed from steam from a fumarole. I hunted around and found a similar picture. Nature is amazing. Here's the link to the Post feature; registration probably required if you aren't already. It's got audio; the image that caught my eye is available as a desktop wallpaper under "Downloads". Opening the link below triggers a sound effect (strong winds). Antarctic Voyages The actual image is here; I don't know if this will open if you aren't registered. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/science/interactives/antarctica/wallpaper_01.html

Spindly orange sea stars, fan-finned ice fish and herds of roving sea cucumbers are among the exotic creatures spied off the Antarctic coast in an area formerly covered by ice, scientists reported on Sunday. This is the first time explorers have been able to catalog wildlife where two mammoth ice shelves used to extend for some 3,900 square miles over the Weddell Sea .

Pristine seascapeA previously unexplored section of Antarctic sea floor lured marine scientists and their vessel Polarstern to the frozen continent for a voyage of exploration over Christmas and New Year.The trip yielded, said researchers, a wealth of useful information and some undiscovered species.(Image: G Chapelle, IPF/ Alfred Wegener Institute) Unexpected giantAmong the new species was this giant amphipod, a type of crustacean, which researchers caught in baited traps. About 10cm (four inches) long, it is one of the biggest amphipods found in the region.(Image: C d'Udekem, Royal Belgium Institute for Natural Sciences) Key creatureAlready well known to science is...

Colossal squid hooked with rings the size of tractor tyres   February 22, 2007 - 3:30PM     New Zealand fishermen in the Ross Sea have caught what's thought to be the largest squid ever found.Its estimated weight is about 450 kilograms.The species is known as the colossal squid, shorter but much heavier than the better known giant squid.It was hauled to the surface while munching on one of its favourite foods, a Patagonian toothfish which the fishermen had hooked on a longline.Dr Steve O'Shea, from the Auckland University of Technology, says the previous largest find weighed 300 kilograms.He...

Why melting is not a threat While today's balance between the icecaps and global sea level has been relatively steady since about 1000 B.C., it would be careless to assume that this is the Earth's natural state and that it should always be this way. What could happen to climate naturally in the next few thousand years? If the Earth continued to warm and break from ice age conditions, some of the remaining ice caps could melt. On the other hand, climate might swing back into another ice age. (In fact, some of the environmentalists now worried about global warming...

Posted: 02/ 04/ 07 8:08 am    Post subject: European Heat Wave 2003: A Global Perspective http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2007/01/31/european-heat-wave-2003-a-global-perspective/#more-215 January 31, 2007 European Heat Wave 2003: A Global Perspective Filed under: Climate Extremes, Heat Waves — Although the event occurred over three years ago, the summer heat wave of 2003 is still prominently featured in every popular presentation of the global warming issue. A web search of “Europe Heat Wave 2003” produces nearly 950,000 sites to choose from, and if you take that plunge, you will see estimates of 35,000 deaths directly attributed to that heat wave, although that number varies considerably...

WASHINGTON -- U.S. government scientists Friday said the long-term outlook for global warming may be more dire than suggested by this week's United Nations' report, which they say doesn't fully address the impact of clouds and melting glaciers. Recent evidence of accelerated melting of glaciers in Greenland and the Antarctic ice cap came too late to be included in the report released Thursday by the U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Glaciers are among the largest sources of fresh water in the world and are contributing to rising ocean levels. Rising sea levels could expose population centers bordering the ocean...

WASHINGTON - Later this week in Paris, climate scientists will issue a dire forecast for the planet that warns of slowly rising sea levels and higher temperatures. But that may be the sugarcoated version. Early and changeable drafts of their upcoming authoritative report on climate change foresee smaller sea level rises than were projected in 2001 in the last report. Many top U.S. scientists reject these rosier numbers. Those calculations don't include the recent, and dramatic, melt-off of big ice sheets in two crucial locations: They "don't take into account the gorillas — Greenland and Antarctica," said Ohio State University...

Experts split over climate danger to Antarctica Scientists challenge 'cautious' UN report Robin McKie, science editor Sunday January 28, 2007 The Observer (UK) Serious disagreement has broken out among scientists over a United Nations climate report's contention that the world's greatest wilderness - Antarctica - will be largely unaffected by rising world temperatures. The report, to be published on Friday, will be one of the most comprehensive on climate change to date, and will paint a grim picture of future changes to the planet's weather patterns. Details of the report were first revealed by The Observer last weekend. However, many...

A few tidbits to pass along at year's end on one of our favorite topics: In a story with a quite different headline and bent, Russ Schnell, director of Observatory and Global Network Operations for NOAA, says that climate change is cyclical and that "the planet’s vegetation, over millions of years, sucks in and spits out carbon dioxide." Yeah, we knew that. Here's an AP article that says, "One hundred scientists from four countries are working on the Antarctic Geological Drilling Program, or ANDRILL, coordinated by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. They gather rock core from deep below the Antarctic sea...

The scare du jour on global warming is a massive inundation of our coast caused by rapid loss of ice from Antarctica. It's a core point in Al Gore's science fiction movie, and it continues to be thumped by doomsayers around the world, in the echo chamber of the alarmist media. It's also a bunch of hooey. If you could take the boredom, you could have read hundreds of news stories on this since An Inconvenient Truth debuted on May 25. But you'll find very little mention of a paper that appeared a mere six weeks later, in the Proceedings...

Warning Issued After 100 Icebergs Spotted Near New Zealand Friday, November 03, 2006 WELLINGTON, New Zealand — A maritime warning has been issued after about 100 icebergs were spotted south of New Zealand, some floating in a major ocean shipping lane, officials said. A New Zealand air force P3 Orion maritime surveillance airplane on routine fisheries patrol in the southern ocean spotted the floating lumps of ice near Auckland Islands, 161 miles south of South Island. The largest iceberg was about 1.2 by 0.9 miles and more than 425 feet high, said Orion captain Andy Nielsen. While it was not...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A bad storm in Alaska last October generated an ocean swell that broke apart a giant iceberg near Antarctica six days later, U.S. researchers reported on Monday. The waves traveled 8,300 miles to destroy the iceberg, said Douglas MacAyeal of the University of Chicago and Emile Okal at Northwestern University. Writing in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, they said their study shows how weather in one region can affect events far away. "One of the things we're debating in the world right now is whether global warming might increase the storminess in the oceans," MacAyeal said in...

Seemingly contradictory research results, such as recent reports of both decreasing and increasing Antarctic ice, can be explained with a new metaphysical theory.

For nearly a century, Californians have fashioned themselves the innovators the United States and the world follow. Not so on global warming. The California Legislature and Governor Schwarzenegger have just passed and signed global warming legislation that looks an awful lot like a watered-down version of the failed Kyoto Protocol. That's soooo 1990s. Kyoto was supposed to reduce our emissions of carbon dioxide, the main human-generated global warming gas, to 7% below 1990 levels by 2008-2012. Nationally, carbon dioxide emissions have risen about 18% since then. California legislation cuts state's emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, a much larger effective...

A 30-mile maze canyons in Antarctica was carved out of bedrock by the catastrophic draining of subglacial lakes during global warming between 12 million and 14 million years ago, according to university researchers who warn a similar event today could have serious environmental consequences. Although scientists have previously theorized that the Labyrinth region in southern Victoria Land was created by water released from lakes that had formed under glaciers, researchers at Syracuse University and Boston University say they found geological evidence to bracket the timing of the last major flooding and link it to a global warming trend at the...

Earthquake Details Magnitude 6.9 (Strong) Date-Time Sunday, August 20, 2006 at 03:41:47 (UTC) = Coordinated Universal Time Sunday, August 20, 2006 at 1:41:47 AM = local time at epicenter Location 61.024°S, 34.371°W Depth 10 km (6.2 miles) set by location program Region SCOTIA SEA Distances 495 km (305 miles) WSW of Bristol Island, South Sandwich Islands 630 km (390 miles) SW of Visokoi Island, South Sandwich Islands 680 km (425 miles) E of Coronation Island, South Orkney Islands 3240 km (2010 miles) N of South Pole, Antarctica Location Uncertainty horizontal +/- 8.5 km (5.3 miles); depth fixed by location program Parameters...

A professor frequently identified as a global warming skeptic has tried to distance himself from that label and a scientist skeptical of that theory questions that shift. “The Antarctic has been cooling (Doran et al)—while climate models all predict a strong warming,” S. Fred Singer for the Science & Environmental Policy Project reports. “It is comical—and also a little sad—to watch the lead author try to explain away his own results in order to maintain a politically correct position on global warming.” A climatologist, Dr. Singer is a professor emeritus at the University of Virginia. He was the first director...

HOBART, Australia - Some of the coldest temperatures on Earth brought a rare cloud formation to the skies over Antarctica, scientists said Tuesday. Meteorological officer Renae Baker captured spectacular images of the nacreous clouds, also known as polar stratospheric clouds, last week at Australia's Mawson station in Antarctica. The clouds only occur at high polar latitudes in winter, requiring temperatures less than minus 176 degrees Fahrenheit. A weather balloon measured temperatures at minus 189 degrees Fahrenheit on the day the photos were taken. Resembling airborne mother-of-pearl shells, the clouds are produced when fading light at sunset passes through water-ice crystals...

Scientists are calling for action to prevent foreign species from taking hold in Antarctica and wrecking the continent's unique ecosystems. Despite Antarctica's inhospitable environment, non-native species introduced by tourists, scientists and explorers are gaining a foothold. Species can hitch a ride on ships and planes carrying visitors and supplies. A paper on the matter tabled at the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting in Edinburgh met with "good agreement". It costs thousands and sometimes millions of dollars to try and get rid of something... prevention is better than a cure Neil Gilbert, Antarctica NZ "Antarctica has long been considered as an...

Does a giant crater lie beneath the Antarctic ice? Signs of an ancient impact could help to explain a mass extinction. Mark Peplow A dense bit of rock in the Antarctic (orange circle) seems to be circled by a crater. © Ohio State University Evidence of a cataclysmic meteorite impact has been unearthed in Antarctica, according to researchers who say the collision could possibly explain the greatest mass extinction ever seen on our planet. But scientists contacted by news@nature.com say they are sceptical, as no signs of such an enormous impact have been found in other, well-studied areas of Antarctica....

An apparent crater as big as Ohio has been found in Antarctica. Scientists think it was carved by a space rock that caused the greatest mass extinction on Earth, 250 million years ago. The crater, buried beneath a half-mile of ice and discovered by some serious airborne and satellite sleuthing, is more than twice as big as the one involved in the demise of the dinosaurs. The crater's location, in the Wilkes Land region of East Antarctica, south of Australia, suggests it might have instigated the breakup of the so-called Gondwana supercontinent, which pushed Australia northward, the researchers said. "This...

Not quite geology, per se, but since glaciers make geology frequently (and slowly), I thought this striking sequence of shots was worthy of presentation. To go to the article about the collision, click the picture; there are links to high-resolution (250m) images of each of the images shown below.

Winter air temperatures over Antarctica have risen by more than 2C in the last 30 years, a new study shows.Research published in the US journal Science says the warming is seen across the whole of the continent and much of the Southern Ocean. The study questions the reliability of current climate models that fail to simulate the temperature rise. In addition, the scientists from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) say the cause of the warming is not clear. It could be linked to increases in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere or natural variations in Antarctica's climate system. Scientists are keen...

Researchers have found traces of a heat-loving bacterium that may live beneath a frozen lake in Antarctica. Lake Vostok is covered by more than 3km of ice and must have been isolated from our planet's atmosphere for millions of years. The bacteria appeared in sediment mixed with a core of ice drilled by Russian and French researchers. The heat-loving, or thermophilic, bacterium may suggest that hydrothermal vents exist on the lake floor. Meanwhile, a new ice core drilled this season may reveal whether there is also life in the lake itself. Hundreds of lakes exist beneath the thick Antarctic ice...

Japan Scientists Find Million-Year-Old Ice Japanese Scientists Recover Million-Year-Old Ice From Antarctica, May Be Oldest Ever TOKYO Jan 25, 2006 (AP)— A team of Japanese researchers drilling on Antarctica has recovered what is believed to be the oldest sample of ice ever possibly dating back 1 million years, officials said Tuesday. The ice sample was taken from a depth of 9,994 feet into the Antarctic ice sheet near the Japanese camp at Fuji Dome, according to Yuji Umezaki, an official with the education and science ministry. He said although exact dating will be conducted after the sample is returned to...

AXcess News) Houston, TX - Satellite surveys show that ice is melting in Antarctica faster than snow fall replenishes it, which is causing the sea to rise.Two seperate studies showed varying results.  But both studies drew the same conclusion, that the ice in Antarctica is melting rapidly.  The only difference between the studies was the amount the sea was rising.The authors work in both studies added weight to the evidence that global warming was affecting sea levels.Earlier estimates were that global warming was causing an increase in rain fall that would generate more snow fall in Greenland and the Antarctic, replacing the...

TCS Daily Antarctic Ice: The Cold Truth Font Size: By Dr. Patrick Michaels : BIO | 03 Mar 2006 This week Science Magazine's on-line SciencExpress reports that Antarctica has been losing large amounts of ice mass over the past three years, contributing to sea level rise at a rate of 0.4 ± 0.2 mm/year. This comes on the heels of a paper published by Science two weeks ago that reported that Greenland was also losing big chunks of ice and contributing to sea level rise at a rate of 0.57 mm/yr. If this sounds like one of those repeating news...

A new space-based study of Antarctica shows its ice sheet is shrinking. Researchers used satellites to plot changes in the Earth's gravity in the Antarctic during the period 2002-2005. Writing in the journal Science, they conclude that the continent is losing 152 cubic km of ice each year, with most loss in the west. In recent years scientists have found other evidence that West Antarctic ice is melting, which could contribute to sea level rise. In his contribution to a recent report on climate change, the director of the British Antarctic Survey, Chris Rapley, described the West Antarctic ice sheet...

Cold and Deep: Antarctica's Lake Vostok has two big neighbors Sid Perkins GREAT LAKES. Lake Vostok and the newly described 90°E and Sovetskaya Lakes lie beneath a kilometers-thick blanket of ice. The black square in the inset shows the outline of this satellite image on a map of Antarctica; the cross indicates the South Pole. R.E. Bell, et al. Trapped beneath Antarctica's kilometers-thick ice sheet are two bodies of water that rival North America's Great Lakes, new analyses suggest. The geological setting of these huge, unfrozen lakes hints that they may harbor ecosystems that have been isolated for millions of...

Beijing announced plans last week to build a high-frequency radar on the South Pole. Analysts say the radar could be used to disrupt U.S. intelligence satellites. China's Zhongshan Station in Antarctica on Jan. 24. AP Photo /Xinhua, Zhang Zongtang The radar will be built at China’s Zhongshan Station, where Beijing has set up of a space environment lab. National security analysts say the South Pole site, because of its remoteness, could be used by China to develop anti-satellite lasers capable of blinding or disrupting U.S. reconnaissance satellites, most of which pass over the pole. The station will consist of 20...