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Development and application of a Py-GC/MS method for the quantification of microplastic contamination in terrestrial environments

5 February, 2025 by Rebecca Peel

This thesis details the development and application of a pyrolysis-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (Py-GC/MS) method for the quantification of microplastic pollution in terrestrial samples. Initial analysis of plastic standards using Py-GC/MS…

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Direct observation of Arctic Sea salt aerosol production from blowing snow and modeling over a changing sea ice environment

4 February, 2025 by Ananth Ranjithkumar, Markus Frey, Thomas Lachlan-Cope, Xin Yang

In the polar regions, there is significant model bias in the number concentrations and seasonality of sea salt aerosol (SSA) due to the lack of understanding of aerosol sources associated…

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Drivers of interspecific spatial segregation in two closely-related seabird species at a Pan-Atlantic scale

1 February, 2025 by Anne-Sophie Bonnet-Lebrun, Norman Ratcliffe

Aim: Ecologically similar species living in sympatry are expected to segregate to reduce the effects of competition where re-sources are limiting. Segregation from heterospecifics commonly occurs in space, but it…

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Annual trends in mercury contamination are associated with changing trophic niches of giant petrels

31 January, 2025 by Danielle Buss, Jaume Forcada, Richard Phillips, William Mills

Annual variation in prey availability can influence seabird diets and hence their exposure to pollutants, including mercury (Hg). Among seabirds, those species that scavenge carrion of marine mammals and other…

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Scaling up ocean conservation through recognition of key biodiversity areas in the Southern Ocean from multispecies tracking data

29 January, 2025 by Philip Trathan

Biodiversity is critical for maintaining ecosystem function but is threatened by increasing anthropogenic pressures. In the Southern Ocean, a highly biologically productive region containing many endemic species, proactive management is…

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Assessing the suitability of sites near Pine Island Glacier for subglacial bedrock drilling aimed at detecting Holocene retreat–readvance

24 January, 2025 by Joanne Johnson

Unambiguous identification of past episodes of ice sheet thinning below the modern surface and grounding line retreat inboard of present requires recovery and exposure dating of subglacial bedrock. Such efforts…

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A dataset of Antarctic ecosystems in ice-free lands: classification, descriptions, and maps

22 January, 2025 by Dominic Hodgson, Kevin Hughes, Peter Convey

Antarctica, Earth’s least understood and most remote continent, is threatened by human disturbances and climate-related changes, underscoring the imperative for biodiversity inventories to inform conservation. Antarctic ecosystems support unique species…

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A Local Meteoric Water Line for Interior Alaska constrains Paleoclimate From 40,000 year old Relict Permafrost

21 January, 2025 by Alistair Monteath

Anthropogenic climate warming is degrading permafrost across Interior Alaska. Information from past warming events provides long-term perspectives of future trajectories, however, late Quaternary seasonal temperatures are poorly constrained. We established…

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Assessing the impact of sewage and wastewater on antimicrobial resistance in nearshore Antarctic biofilms and sediments

20 January, 2025 by Kevin Hughes, Kudzai Hwengwere, Lloyd Peck, Melody Clark

Despite being recognised as a global problem, our understanding of human-mediated antimicrobial resistance (AMR) spread to remote regions of the world is limited. Antarctica, often referred to as “the last…

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Remote mapping of bedrock for future cosmogenic nuclide exposure dating studies in unvisited areas of Antarctica

17 January, 2025 by Jonathan Adams, Joanne Johnson, Stephen Roberts

Cosmogenic nuclide exposure dating is an important technique for reconstructing glacial histories. Many of the most commonly applied cosmogenic nuclides are extracted from the mineral quartz, meaning sampling of felsic…

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Diatom distribution and long-term survival in a heavily polluted sediment core from the Bay of Bagnoli (Tyrrhenian Sea, Italy)

8 January, 2025 by Lorena Romero Martinez

Diatom resting stages can remain viable in sediments for decades and germinate when exposed to suitable environmental conditions, inoculating the water column and the surface sediments with new populations of…

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Increasing Tephra Deposition in Northeastern North America Points to Atmospheric Circulation Changes at the Early Mid Holocene Transition

7 January, 2025 by Alistair Monteath

The number of cryptotephra (non-visible volcanic ash) records from northeastern North America is unique in the continent. The resulting tephrostratigraphic framework includes ash deposits sourced from volcanic arcs across the…

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ENSO-induced Latitudinal Variation of the Subtropical Jet Modulates Extreme Winter Precipitation over the Western Himalaya

7 January, 2025 by Andrew Orr

In this study, we investigate the complex relationship between western disturbances (WDs), the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), and extreme precipitation events (EPEs) in the western Himalaya (WH) during the extended…

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Quantification of microplastic targets in environmental matrices using pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry

1 January, 2025 by Rebecca Peel, Stephen Roberts

Microplastic pollution is a growing environmental problem. Consequently, an emerging area of research is the analysis of these micro-particles, to identify the distribution and impacts of plastic in the environment.…

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Plasticity syndromes in wild vertebrates: Patterns and consequences of individual variation in plasticity across multiple behaviours

31 December, 2024 by Timothy Jones

Behavioural plasticity is an important mechanism allowing animals to cope with changing environments. Theory has hypothesized the existence of ‘plasticity syndromes’—positive correlations in plasticity across multiple behaviours within an individual—affording…

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Microplastic hotspots mapped across the Southern Ocean reveal areas of potential ecological impact

30 December, 2024 by Aidan Hunter, Arlie McCarthy, Clara Manno, Sally Thorpe

Marine microplastic is pervasive, polluting the remotest ecosystems including the Southern Ocean. Since this region is already undergoing climatic changes, the additional stress of microplastic pollution on the ecosystem should…

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Direct Geologic Constraints on the Timing of Late Holocene Ice Thickening in the Amundsen Sea Embayment, Antarctica

28 December, 2024 by Jonathan Adams, Joanne Johnson, Stephen Roberts

Constraining past West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) change helps validate numerical models simulating future ice sheet dynamics. Following rapid deglaciation during the mid-Holocene, ice near Thwaites Glacier was ∼35 m…

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Silicon isotopes reveal the impact of fjordic processes on the transport of reactive silicon from glaciers to coastal regions

20 December, 2024 by Kate Hendry

Accelerated mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet leads to retreating glaciers and enhanced freshwater runoff to adjacent coastal regions, potentially providing additional essential nutrients, such as silicon, to downstream…

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Stepwise Oligocene–Miocene breakdown of subpolar gyres and strengthening of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current

19 December, 2024 by Claus-Dieter Hillenbrand, Robert Larter

Through the Cenozoic (66–0 Ma), the dominant mode of ocean surface circulation in the Southern Ocean transitioned from two large subpolar gyres to circumpolar circulation with a strong Antarctic Circumpolar Current…

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Bioconnection of airborne fungal diversity across the South Atlantic Ocean, sub-Antarctic and South Shetland Islands assessed using DNA metabarcoding

19 December, 2024 by Peter Convey

To better understand the long-distance dispersal of fungi between South America and Antarctica, we assessed aerial fungal diversity based on environmental DNA samples along a South Atlantic transect from Brazil…

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Active and passive organic carbon fluxes during a bloom in the Southern Ocean (South Georgia)

18 December, 2024 by Anna Belcher, Geraint Tarling, Gabriele Stowasser, Sophie Fielding

The Controls Over Mesopelagic Interior Carbon Storage (COMICS) cruise DY086 took place aboard the RRS Discovery in the South Atlantic during November and December, 2017. Physical, chemical, biogeochemical and biological…

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Uncharted territory: the arrival of Psychoda albipennis (Zetterstedt, 1850) (Diptera: Psychodidae) in Maritime Antarctica

17 December, 2024 by Peter Convey

Despite increasing awareness of the threats they pose, exotic species continue to arrive in Antarctica with anthropogenic assistance, some of which inevitably have the potential to become aggressively invasive. Here,…

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Exploring Sources of Gravity Waves in the Southern Winter Stratosphere Using 3-D Satellite Observations and Backward Ray-Tracing

16 December, 2024 by Tracy Moffat-Griffin

During austral winter, the southern high latitudes has some of the most intense stratospheric gravity wave (GW) activity globally. However, producing accurate representations of GW dynamics in this region in…

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A High‐Resolution Microscopy System for Biological Studies of Cold‐Adapted Species Under Physiological Conditions

15 December, 2024 by Anne-Pia Marty, Lloyd Peck, Melody Clark

The Antarctic seabed harbors significant biodiversity, and almost 90% of oceanic environments are permanently below 5 °C (i.e., deep sea and polar regions). However, organisms whose entire lifecycle occurs around…

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Method for Quantification of Fatty Acids in Ice Cores and Sea-Ice Cores Using Liquid Chromatography High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry

13 December, 2024 by Liz Thomas, Roseanne Smith, Siobhan Johnson

Marine-sourced fatty acids provide a promising new suite of proxies for past sea-ice reconstructions, validated using ice cores from Bouvet Island, Greenland, and Alaska. Despite showing great potential as a…

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Sources and Seasonal Variations of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) in Surface Snow in the Arctic

10 December, 2024 by Jack Humby

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are persistent anthropogenic contaminants, some of which are toxic and bioaccumulative. Perfluoroalkyl carboxylic acids (PFCAs) and perfluoroalkyl sulfonic acids (PFSAs) can form during the atmospheric…

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The Paleochrono-1.1 probabilistic model to derive a common age model for several paleoclimatic sites using absolute and relative dating constraints

10 December, 2024 by Robert Mulvaney

Past climate and environmental changes can be reconstructed using paleoclimate archives such as ice cores, lake and marine sediment cores, speleothems, tree rings, and corals. The dating of these natural…

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Brief communication: New perspectives on the skill of modelled sea ice trends in light of recent Antarctic sea ice loss

5 December, 2024 by Caroline Holmes, Jeremy Wilkinson, Paul Holland, Thomas Bracegirdle

Most climate models do not reproduce the 1979–2014 increase in Antarctic sea ice cover. This was a contributing factor in successive Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports allocating low confidence…

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Seawater Lead Isotopes Record Early Miocene to Modern Circulation Dynamics in the Pacific Sector of the Southern Ocean

5 December, 2024 by Claus-Dieter Hillenbrand

The Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) is Earth's largest current flowing around Antarctica at all depths and connecting major ocean basins, thus representing an important component of Earth's climate. However, the…

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Shallow coverage in shallow waters: the incompleteness of intertidal species inventories in biodiversity database records

2 December, 2024 by Jakob Thyrring, Lloyd Peck

The availability of online biodiversity data has increased in recent decades, aiding our understanding of diversity patterns and species richness–environment relationships across temporal and spatial scales. However, even the most…

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