7 October, 2020 by Alex Burton-Johnson, Carlos Martin Garcia, Fausto Ferraccioli
Antarctic geothermal heat flow (GHF) affects the ice sheet temperature, determining how it slides and internally deforms, as well as the rheological behaviour of the lithosphere. However, GHF remains poorly…Read more on Antarctic geothermal heat flow: future research directions
7 October, 2020 by Huw Griffiths, Katrin Linse
Climate change is influencing some environmental variables in the Southern Ocean (SO) and this will have an effect on the marine biodiversity. Peracarid crustaceans are one of the dominant and…
2 October, 2020 by David Barnes, Terri Souster, Terri Souster
The flow of carbon from atmosphere to sediment fauna and sediments reduces atmospheric CO2, which in turn reduces warming. Here, during the Changing Arctic Ocean Seafloor programme, we use comparable…Read more on Variation in zoobenthic blue carbon in the Arctic’s Barents Sea Shelf Sediments
1 October, 2020 by Norman Ratcliffe
Remote oceanic islands harbour unique biodiversity, especially of species that rely on the marine trophic resources around their breeding islands. Identifying marine areas used by such species is essential to…
1 October, 2020 by Steve Colwell
A heated snowgauge was installed at Rothera in 2008 and continues to be in operation at the present time. Its measurements have been used to estimate annual snowfall at Rothera,…
1 October, 2020 by Katrin Linse
Lush ‘oases’ of life seen in chemosynthetic ecosystems such as hot vents and cold seeps represent rare, localized exceptions to the generally oligotrophic deep ocean floor. Organic falls, best known…1 October, 2020 by Peter Convey
Bioremediation has been proposed as a means of dealing with oil spills on the continent. However, the introduction of non-native organisms, including microbes, even for this purpose would appear to…
1 October, 2020
Cephalopods represent an important pathway for mercury transfer through food-webs. Due to the general difficulties in capturing oceanic squid, beaks found in the diet of top predators can be used…
1 October, 2020 by Katrin Linse
Geothermal energy provides an important resource in Antarctic marine ecosystems, exemplified by the recent discovery of large-sized chemosymbiotic vesicomyid bivalves (subfamily Pliocardiinae) in the Southern Ocean. These clams, which we…
1 October, 2020 by Clara Manno
Plastic debris has been identified as a potential threat to Antarctic marine ecosystems, however, the impact of nanoplastics (
1 October, 2020 by Caitlin Frankish, Richard Phillips
Determining the drivers of movement of different life‐history stages is crucial for understanding age‐related changes in survival rates and, for marine top predators, the link between fisheries overlap and incidental…
1 October, 2020 by Carlos Martin Garcia
Streaming ice accounts for a major fraction of global ice flux, yet we cannot yet fully explain the dominant controls on its kinematics. In this contribution, we use an anisotropic…
1 October, 2020 by Keith Nicholls
Thermodynamic ablation of ice in contact with the ocean is an essential element of ice sheet and ocean interactions but is challenging to model and quantify. Building on earlier observations…
1 October, 2020
In some animal species, individuals regularly breed with relatives, including siblings and parents. Given the high fitness costs of inbreeding, evolutionary biologists have found it challenging to understand the persistence…Read more on Inbreeding depresses altruism in a cooperative society
1 October, 2020 by Hugh Corr
The authors propose an algorithm to estimate the path followed by refracted signals from a source to a target, through a medium formed by uniform parallel layers with known different…Read more on Efficient path estimation through parallel media for wide-beam ice-sounding radar.
1 October, 2020 by Iain Staniland, Kayleigh Jones, Norman Ratcliffe
Natural selection should favour strategies that maximise reproductive success. Females may use different resources during progressive stages of reproduction according to energetic demands, behavioural constraints and prey availability. We used…1 October, 2020 by Anne-Sophie Bonnet-Lebrun
Pelagic seabirds are important components of many marine ecosystems. The most abundant species are medium/small sized petrels (1 October, 2020 by Alexander Brearley
The physical mechanisms that remove energy from the Southern Ocean’s vigorous mesoscale eddy field are not well understood. One proposed mechanism is direct energy transfer to the internal wave field…Read more on Observed eddy-internal wave interactions in the Southern Ocean
1 October, 2020 by Sofia-Katerina Kufner
We present a local earthquake tomography to illuminate the crustal and uppermost mantle structure beneath the southern Puna plateau and to test the delamination hypothesis. Vp and Vp/Vs ratios were…28 September, 2020 by Louise Sime, Maria Vittoria Guarino
El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the strongest mode of interannual climate variability in the current climate, influencing ecosystems, agriculture and weather systems across the globe, but future projections of ENSO…Read more on Comparison of past and future simulations of ENSO in CMIP5/PMIP3 and CMIP6/PMIP4 models
28 September, 2020 by Maria Vittoria Guarino
We investigate hydrology during a past climate slightly warmer than the present: the Last Interglacial (LIG). With daily output of pre‐industrial and LIG simulations from eight new climate models we…Read more on Global River Discharge and Floods in the Warmer Climate of the Last Interglacial
24 September, 2020 by Keith Nicholls
Calving events of Petermann Glacier, northwest Greenland, in 2010 and 2012 reduced the length of its ice tongue by c. 25 km, allowing exploration of newly uncovered seafloor during the…
20 September, 2020 by Claus-Dieter Hillenbrand
The marine-based West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is considered the most unstable part of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, with particular vulnerability in the Amundsen Sea sector where glaciers are melting…
18 September, 2020 by Andrew Fleming, Adrian Jenkins, David Bett, Paul Holland
The Amundsen Sea has the highest thinning rates of ice shelves in Antarctica. This imbalance is caused by changes in ocean melting induced by warm Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW) intrusions.…
16 September, 2020 by Ella Gilbert, John King
Recent ice shelf retreat on the east coast of the Antarctic Peninsula has been principally attributed to atmospherically driven melt. However, previous studies on the largest of these ice shelves…
16 September, 2020 by Chester Sands, David Barnes, Michael Meredith, Simon Morley
The Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) dominates the open-ocean circulation of the Southern Ocean, and both isolates and connects the Southern Ocean biodiversity. However, the impact on biological processes of other…
16 September, 2020 by Louise Ireland, Richard Phillips
Long-term studies of pelagic nekton in the Southern Ocean and their responses to ongoing environmental change are rare. Using stable isotope ratios measured in squid beaks recovered from diet samples…
15 September, 2020 by Hua Lu
Extreme polar vortex events known as sudden stratospheric warmings can influence surface winter weather conditions, but their timing is difficult to predict. Here, we examine factors that influence their occurrence,…Read more on Forecasting extreme stratospheric polar vortex events
14 September, 2020 by Anna Belcher, Geraint Tarling, Gabriele Stowasser, Ryan Saunders, Sophie Fielding
Mesopelagic fish are an important component of marine ecosystems, and their contribution to marine biogeochemical cycles is becoming increasingly recognized. However, major uncertainties remain in the rates at which they…
9 September, 2020 by Kelly Hogan, Robert Larter, Tom Jordan
Ice shelves play a critical role in the long-term stability of ice sheets through their buttressing effect. The underlying bathymetry and cavity thickness are key inputs for modelling future ice…
9 September, 2020 by Claus-Dieter Hillenbrand, James Smith, James Kirkham, Kelly Hogan, Robert Arthern, Robert Larter, Tom Jordan
The geometry of the sea floor immediately beyond Antarctica's marine-terminating glaciers is a fundamental control on warm-water routing, but it also describes former topographic pinning points that have been important…9 September, 2020 by Thomas Bauska
Carbonate cave deposits (speleothems) have been used widely for paleoclimate reconstructions; however, few studies have examined the utility of other speleothem-forming minerals for this purpose. Here we demonstrate for the…
7 September, 2020 by Dani Jones, David Vaughan, Emily Shuckburgh, Erik Mackie
Sea level rise increases the frequency and severity of storm surges and coastal flooding, causing serious damage to critical infrastructure and leading to the displacement of coastal communities around the…
2 September, 2020 by Luca Telesca
The three mussel species comprising the Mytilus complex are widespread across Europe and readily hybridize when they occur in sympatry, resulting in a mosaic of populations with varying genomic backgrounds.…2 September, 2020 by Ingrid Cnossen
The magnetic equator in the Brazilian region has moved over 1,100 km northward since 1957, passing the geomagnetic observatory Tatuoca (TTB), in northern Brazil, around 2013. We recovered and processed…2 September, 2020 by Richard Hindmarsh, Richard Hindmarsh
In 2013 an ice core was recovered from Roosevelt Island, an ice dome between two submarine troughs carved by paleo-ice-streams in the Ross Sea, Antarctica. The ice core is part…Read more on An 83 000-year-old ice core from Roosevelt Island, Ross Sea, Antarctica
1 September, 2020 by Christine McKenna
Over the past few decades, Arctic sea-ice extent has declined, while there has been an apparent increase in severe winter weather across some mid-latitude regions. This has led to much…
1 September, 2020 by Jennifer Jackson, Peter Convey
Environmental conditions were particularly severe during the Last Glacial Maximum, altering the distribution of the Southern Hemisphere biota, particularly at higher latitudes. The copepod Boeckella poppei is the only macroscopic…
1 September, 2020 by Hugh Venables
Copepods that enter dormancy, such as Calanoides acutus, are key primary consumers in Southern Ocean food webs where they convert a portion of the seasonal phytoplankton biomass into a longer-term…Read more on Plasticity in dormancy behaviour of Calanoides acutus in Antarctic coastal waters
1 September, 2020 by Alessandro Cavallo, Lloyd Peck
Seasonality of food supply is a major driver of physiological and ecological adaptations of marine zooplankton. High-latitude marine copepods accumulate lipids for maintenance and reproductive maturation during the food-depleted winter…Read more on Lipid storage patterns in marine copepods: environmental, ecological
1 September, 2020 by Geraint Tarling, Gabriele Stowasser, Ryan Saunders, Sophie Fielding
Myctophids are the most abundant fish group in the Southern Ocean pelagic ecosystem and are an important link in the Antarctic marine food web. Due to their major ecological role,…Read more on Main drivers of mercury levels in Southern Ocean lantern fish Myctophidae
1 September, 2020 by Ben Robinson, David Barnes, Simon Morley
Disturbance is a key factor in most natural environments and, globally, disturbance regimes are changing, driven by increased anthropogenic influences, including climate change. There is, however, still a lack of…
1 September, 2020 by Kaitlin Naughten, Thomas Bracegirdle
Two decades into the 21st century there is growing evidence for global impacts of Antarctic and Southern Ocean climate change. Reliable estimates of how the Antarctic climate system would behave…Read more on Twenty first century changes in Antarctic and Southern Ocean surface climate in CMIP6
1 September, 2020 by Daniel Ashurst, Julius Rix, Robert Mulvaney
The paleoclimate community has an interest in distributed subglacial bedrock sampling but, while capable drill systems do exist, they are often incompatible with Twin Otter logistics. To address this issue,…
1 September, 2020 by Gareth Marshall
Extreme precipitation events (EPEs) have a major impact across Arctic Fennoscandia (AF). Here we examine the spatial variability of seasonal 50-year trends in three EPEs across AF for 1968–2017, using…
1 September, 2020 by Philip Trathan
When successive stages of an organism's life-history overlap, conflicts and trade-offs can emerge due to competition among physiological pathways. For example, long periods of sustained locomotion in migrating birds are…Read more on Trade-off between aerobic performance and egg production in migratory macaroni penguins
1 September, 2020 by Peter Convey
The Antarctic is generally considered to be one of the most pristine areas in the world. However, both long and short-range pollutants are now known to be present in the…
1 September, 2020 by Alex Burton-Johnson, Philip Leat, Teal Riley
The Cretaceous marks an episode of enhanced magmatism, sedimentation and tectonic processes along the entire proto-Pacific convergent margin of West Gondwana. Cretaceous magmatism across the Antarctic Peninsula is dominated by…
1 September, 2020 by Mark Belchier, Susan Gregory
As the role of mercury is poorly known in Southern Ocean biota, the total mercury (T-Hg) concentrations were evaluated in upper/lower beaks, digestive gland, gills and mantle muscle of Adelieledone…Read more on Antarctic octopod beaks as proxy for mercury concentrations in soft tissues
1 September, 2020 by Thomas Bracegirdle
Earth System models enable a broad range of climate interactions that physical climate models are unable to simulate. However, the extent to which adding Earth System components changes or improves…1 September, 2020 by Emma Young, Michael Meredith
The northeast periphery of the Scotia Sea hosts one of the largest chlorophyll‐a blooms of the Southern Ocean. This bloom peaks to the northwest of the island of South Georgia,…1 September, 2020 by Peter Convey
This present study aimed at examining the ability of cold-adapted Antarctic bacteria to tolerate and degrade diesel in the presence of different types of heavy metal co-pollutants.
28 August, 2020 by Elisabeth Biersma, Jennifer Jackson, Katrin Linse, Peter Convey
Biogeographic patterns of globally widespread species are expected to reflect regional structure, as well as connectivity caused by occasional long-distance dispersal. We assessed the level and drivers of population structure,…
27 August, 2020 by Peter Convey
The dispersal routes of taxa with transoceanic disjunctions remain poorly understood, with the potential roles of Antarctica not yet demonstrated. Mosses are suitable organisms to test direct intra‐Antarctic dispersal, as…
27 August, 2020 by Peter Convey
Petroleum hydrocarbons, notably diesel oil, are the main energy source for running amenities in the Antarctic region and are the major cause of pollution in this area. Diesel oil spills…
26 August, 2020 by Peter Convey
With the progressive increase in human activities in the Antarctic region, the possibility of domestic oil spillage also increases. Developing means for the removal of oils, such as canola oil,…25 August, 2020 by Felipe Simoes
The Scotia Arc, comprising southern South America, South Georgia and the South Orkney Islands and the Antarctic Peninsula, is home to a range of understudied insect species which are constantly…Read more on Ecophysiology, Morphology and Phylogeography of Insects in the Scotia Arc.
24 August, 2020 by Peter Convey
During austral summer field seasons between 1999 and 2018, we sampled at 91 locations throughout southern Victoria Land and along the Transantarctic Mountains for six species of endemic microarthropods (Collembola),…24 August, 2020 by Keith Nicholls
Mass loss from the Antarctic ice sheet, Earth’s largest freshwater reservoir, results directly in global sea-level rise and Southern Ocean freshening. Observational and modeling studies have demonstrated that ice shelf…Read more on Strong ice-ocean interaction beneath Shirase Glacier Tongue in East Antarctica
21 August, 2020 by Emilie Capron
Abrupt climate changes during the last glacial period have been detected in a global array of palaeoclimate records, but our understanding of their absolute timing and regional synchrony is incomplete.…Read more on Synchronous timing of abrupt climate changes during the last glacial period
20 August, 2020 by Elisabeth Biersma, Kevin Newsham, Peter Convey, Will Goodall-Copestake
Aim: Antarctica's remote and extreme terrestrial environments are inhabited by only two species of native vascular plants. We assessed genetic connectivity amongst Antarctic and South American populations of one of…19 August, 2020 by Robert Mulvaney
The last glacial period is characterized by a number of millennial climate events that have been identified in both Greenland and Antarctic ice cores and that are abrupt in Greenland…
18 August, 2020 by Adrian Jenkins, Paul Holland
The changing supply of warm Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW) to the West Antarctic continental shelf is responsible for the basal melting and thinning of the West Antarctic ice shelves that…18 August, 2020 by Heather Regan, Michael Meredith, Paul Holland
The Southern Ocean is chronically undersampled due to its remoteness, harsh environment, and sea ice cover. Ocean circulation models yield significant insight into key processes and to some extent obviate…
15 August, 2020 by Simon Morley
Studying the influence of changing environmental conditions on Antarctic marine benthic invertebrates is strongly constrained by limited access to the region, which poses difficulties to performing long-term experimental studies. Ecological…
15 August, 2020 by Elaine Mawbey, Claus-Dieter Hillenbrand, James Smith
Benthic foraminifera Mg/Ca is a well-established bottom water temperature (BWT) proxy used in paleoclimate studies. The relationship between Mg/Ca and BWT for numerous species has been determined using core-top and…13 August, 2020 by Geraint Tarling, Jennifer Freer, Martin Collins
Ecological niche models (ENMs) can be a practical approach for investigating distributions and habitat characteristics of pelagic species. In principle, to reflect the ecological niche of a species well, ENMs…11 August, 2020 by Pierre Dutrieux
This paper reviews the scientific motivation and challenges, development, and use of underwater robotic vehicles designed for use in ice-covered waters, with special attention paid to the navigation systems employed…
10 August, 2020 by Irene Malmierca Vallet, Louise Sime, Maria Vittoria Guarino
The Last Interglacial (LIG), a warmer period 130,000–116,000 years before present, is a potential analogue for future climate change. Stronger LIG summertime insolation at high northern latitudes drove Arctic land…Read more on Sea-ice-free Arctic during the Last Interglacial supports fast future loss
7 August, 2020 by Andy Smith
The main fieldwork for project AFI 1-05 (the RABID project) was carried out on Rutford Ice Stream in the 2004/05 field season. The biggest scientific task was to access the…
6 August, 2020 by Irene Malmierca Vallet, Louise Sime, Maria Vittoria Guarino
Palaeoclimate model simulations are an important tool to improve our understanding of the mechanisms of climate change. These simulations also provide tests of the ability of models to simulate climates…
1 August, 2020 by Scott Hosking
The current method for averaging model ensembles, which is to calculate a multi model mean, assumes model independence and equal model skill. Sharing of model components amongst families of models…
1 August, 2020 by Simeon Hill
Mercury is a bioaccumulating toxic pollutant which can reach humans through the consumption of contaminated food (e.g. marine fish). Although the Southern Ocean is often portrayed as a pristine ecosystem,…
1 August, 2020 by Philip Trathan
The conservation of biodiversity is hampered by data deficiencies, with many new species and subspecies awaiting description or reclassification. Population genomics and ecological niche modelling offer complementary new tools for…
1 August, 2020 by Richard Horne
The flux of > 2 MeV electrons at geosynchronous orbit is used by space weather forecasters as a key indicator of enhanced risk of damage to spacecraft in low, medium…Read more on Forecasting GOES 15 >2 MeV electron fluxes from solar wind data and geomagnetic indices
1 August, 2020 by Richard Phillips
1. In a highly dynamic airspace, flying animals are predicted to adjust foraging behaviour to variable wind conditions to minimize movement costs. 2. Sexual size dimorphism is widespread in wild…
1 August, 2020 by Alex Burton-Johnson
New field, geochemical, and geochronological data from the Segama Valley Felsic Intrusions (SVFI) of Sabah, north Borneo, shows them to be arc-derived tonalites; not windows or partial melts of a…1 August, 2020 by Andrew Kavanagh, Jade Reidy, Jade Reidy
This paper presents observations of polar cap arc substructure down to scale sizes of meters and temporal resolution of milliseconds. Two case studies containing polar cap arcs occurring over Svalbard…1 August, 2020 by Michael Rose, Mervyn Freeman
Nearly all studies of impulsive magnetic perturbation events (MPEs) with large magnetic field variability (dB/dt) that can produce dangerous geomagnetically‐induced currents (GICs) have used data from the northern hemisphere. Here…1 August, 2020 by Jaume Forcada
High density single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) arrays allow large numbers of individuals to be rapidly and cost-effectively genotyped at large numbers of genetic markers. However, despite being widely used in…
31 July, 2020 by Connor Bamford, Hannah Cubaynes, Jennifer Jackson, Laura Gerrish, Philip Trathan, Peter Fretwell
As whales recover from commercial exploitation, they are increasing in abundance in habitats that they have been absent from for decades. However, studying the recovery and habitat use patterns of…
31 July, 2020 by David Barnes
The Southern Ocean plays a critical role in regulating global climate as a major sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), and in global ocean biogeochemistry by supplying nutrients to the…Read more on Changing biogeochemistry of the Southern Ocean and its ecosystem implications
31 July, 2020 by Peter Convey
The skin is the first line of defense against pathogen and other environmental pollutant. The body is constantly exposed to reactive oxygen species (ROS) that stimulates inflammatory process in the…28 July, 2020 by Irena Vankova, Keith Nicholls
Several autonomous phase-sensitive radio-echo sounders (ApRES) were deployed at Greenland glaciers to investigate ice deformation. Different attenuation settings were tested and it was observed that, in the presence of clipping…Read more on Depth-dependent artifacts resulting from ApRES signal clipping
23 July, 2020 by Thomas Bracegirdle
Projection of the contribution of ice sheets to sea level change as part of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) takes the form of simulations from coupled ice…23 July, 2020 by Connor Bamford
Photographs collected during a 23 yr photo-identification study in the Moray Firth were examined to assess the prevalence, type and severity of vertebral deformations present in bottlenose dolphin Tursiops truncatus…22 July, 2020 by Andrew Orr, Hamish Pritchard
Surface meltwater on ice shelves can exist as slush, it can pond in lakes or crevasses, or it can flow in surface streams and rivers. The collapse of the Larsen…Read more on Lateral meltwater transfer across an Antarctic ice shelf.
21 July, 2020 by Rosie Williams, Robert Arthern
We present the result of the third Marine Ice Sheet Model Intercomparison Project, MISMIP+. MISMIP+ is intended to be a benchmark for ice-flow models which include fast sliding marine ice…Read more on Results of the third Marine Ice Sheet Model Intercomparison Project (MISMIP+)
16 July, 2020 by Christopher Bull
Like many western boundary currents, the East Australian Current extension is projected to get stronger and warmer in the future. The CMIP5 multi‐model mean (MMM) projection suggests up to 5°C…
14 July, 2020 by Felipe Simoes, Peter Convey
The habitat of the intertidal flightless midge Telmatogeton magellanicus (Jacobs, 1900) is described for the first time from the northern coast of Navarino Island, Tierra del Fuego, Chile. Additionally, we…
14 July, 2020 by Jennifer Freer
Global oceans are absorbing over 90% of the heat trapped in our atmosphere due to accumulated anthropogenic greenhouse gases, resulting in increasing ocean temperatures. Such changes may influence marine ectotherms,…14 July, 2020 by Richard Horne
Van Allen Probes EMFISIS observations in both survey and burst mode are coupled with ray tracing simulations to determine the percentage of chorus wave power that exists with the conditions…