20 February, 2024 by Teal Riley
We present the first volatile contents (H2O, CO2, Cl, F, S) of young (< 6 Ma) submarine basaltic glasses from the Phoenix and West Scotia mid-ocean ridges and the Bransfield Strait…20 February, 2024 by Madeleine Lewis
Glacier algal blooms dominate the surfaces of glaciers and ice sheets during summer melt seasons, with larger blooms anticipated in years that experience the greatest melt. Here, we characterize the…Read more on Alpine glacier algal bloom during a record melt year
20 February, 2024 by Dani Jones
From generating metrics representative of a wide region to saving costs by reducing the density of an observational network, the reasons to split the ocean into distinct regions are many.…15 February, 2024 by Dieter Tetzner, Dorothea Moser, Liz Thomas
Sub-Antarctic islands and Antarctic coastal regions provide valuable sites for investigating environmental processes in the Southern Ocean. The fact that these sites are situated within the sea ice zone underscores…Read more on Investigating halogens and MSA in the Southern Hemisphere: A spatial analysis
14 February, 2024 by Scott Hosking
Predicting sea ice concentration is an important task in climate analysis. The recently proposed deep learning system IceNet is the state of the art sea ice prediction model. IceNet takes…Read more on Interrogating Sea Ice Predictability with Gradients
13 February, 2024 by Alison McLaren, Louise Sime, Qinggang Gao, Thomas Bracegirdle
Improving our understanding of the controls on Antarctic precipitation is critical for gaining insights into past and future polar and global environmental changes. Here we develop innovative water tracing diagnostics…13 February, 2024 by Dominic Hodgson, Oliver Marsh
The Brunt Ice Shelf, Antarctica, accelerated rapidly from a velocity of 900 to 1500 m a−1 during 6 months, following calving of a 1500 km2 iceberg on 22 January 2023. The immediate response…11 February, 2024 by Richard Horne
In a case study using Van Allen Probe B, we investigate chorus wave observations near the western edge of a plasmaspheric plume characterized by steep density gradients. Initially, wave vectors…Read more on Propagation of Very Oblique Chorus Waves Near a Plasmaspheric Plume Boundary
10 February, 2024 by Mark Clilverd
The amplitude of Very Low Frequency (VLF) transmissions propagating from transmitter to receiver between the Earth's surface and the ionospheric D-region is a useful measurement to detect changes in the…Read more on Processing of VLF Amplitude Measurements: Deduction of a Quiet Time Seasonal Variation
8 February, 2024 by Ellen Bowler, Hannah Cubaynes, Marie Attard, Penny Clarke, Peter Fretwell, Richard Phillips
Although many medium-to-large terrestrial vertebrates are still counted by ground or aerial surveys, remote-sensing technologies and image analysis have developed rapidly in recent decades, offering improved accuracy and repeatability, lower…7 February, 2024 by Emma Young, Joanna Zanker, Paul Holland
South Georgia is a heavily glaciated sub-Antarctic island in the Southern Ocean. Cumberland Bay is the largest fjord on the island, split into two arms, each with a large marine-terminating…5 February, 2024 by Peter Convey
We report the first record of the microlepidopteran Plodia interpunctella beyond the South Shetland Islands at the Chilean Yelcho scientific station (64°52′33.1428″ S; 63°35′1.9572″ W), Doumer Island, close to the…3 February, 2024 by Edward Brown
Thermospheric density is one of the main sources of uncertainty in the estimation of satellites' position and velocity in low-Earth orbit. This has negative consequences in several space domains, including…Read more on Improving Thermospheric Density Predictions in Low‐Earth Orbit With Machine Learning
2 February, 2024 by Andrew Kavanagh, Gareth Chisham, Neil Cobbett, Paul Breen, Timothy Barnes
Solar tides play a major role in the dynamics of the upper mesosphere and lower thermosphere (MLT). Hence, a comprehensive understanding of these tides is important for successful modelling of…1 February, 2024 by Alison Cleary, Jennifer Freer, Martin Collins
Lanternfishes (Myctophidae) are key components of mesopelagic fish communities globally. In the Southern Ocean, incomplete information on myctophid diets limits our understanding of their energetics, interactions and wider ecosystem impact.…1 February, 2024 by John King, Thomas Bracegirdle
Between 15 and 19 March 2022, East Antarctica experienced an exceptional heat wave with widespread 30°–40°C temperature anomalies across the ice sheet. This record-shattering event saw numerous monthly temperature records…1 February, 2024 by John King, Thomas Bracegirdle
Between 15 and 19 March 2022, East Antarctica experienced an exceptional heat wave with widespread 30°–40°C temperature anomalies across the ice sheet. In Part I, we assessed the meteorological drivers…1 February, 2024 by Otis Brunner
Aim: Deep-sea hydrothermal vent habitats support a low-diversity fauna in which most species are unique to the ecosystem. To inform conservation planning around this vulnerable marine ecosystem, we examine species…1 February, 2024 by Kevin Hughes, Peter Convey
The small ice-free areas of Antarctica are essential locations for both biodiversity and scientific research but are subject to considerable and expanding human impacts, resulting primarily from station-based research and…Read more on Systematic conservation planning for Antarctic research stations
1 February, 2024 by Clara Manno
The sinking velocity (SV) of organic particles is a critical driver of carbon transport to the deep sea. Accurate determination of marine particle SV and their influencing factors is therefore…1 February, 2024 by Claus-Dieter Hillenbrand
International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Expedition 379 to the Amundsen Sea margin of West Antarctica recovered drill cores at two sites spanning the Latest Miocene–Holocene interval with the aim of…1 February, 2024 by Alex Brisbourne
This paper presents a weakly supervised machine learning method, which we call DAS-N2N, for suppressing strong random noise in distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) recordings. DAS-N2N requires no manually produced labels…1 February, 2024 by Dominic Hodgson
It is increasingly apparent that local and regional factors, including geographic location, topography and climatic variability, strongly influence the timing and extent of glaciations across the Southern Hemisphere. Glacial chronologies…Read more on A glacial chronology for sub-Antarctic Marion Island from MIS 2 and MIS 3
1 February, 2024 by David Barnes
Marine ecosystems in Antarctica are thought to be highly vulnerable to aspects of dynamic global climate change, such as warming. In deep-water ecosystems, there has been little physico-chemical change in…1 February, 2024 by Laura Gerrish, Michael Rose
The Lost Meteorites of Antarctica project was the first UK-led Antarctic meteorite recovery expedition. The project has successfully confirmed two new high-density meteorite stranding zones in the Hutchison Icefield and…Read more on Overview of the Lost Meteorites of Antarctica field campaigns
1 February, 2024 by Caroline Holmes, Ella Gilbert
Antarctic sea ice is a vitally important part of the regional and global climate. In 2023, sea ice extent fell to record lows, reaching unprecedented values for both the summer…Read more on 2023’s Antarctic sea ice extent is the lowest on record
1 February, 2024 by Stephen Roberts
Inorganic geochemistry is a powerful tool in paleolimnology. It has become one of the most commonly used techniques to analyze lake sediments, particularly due to the development and increasing availability…1 February, 2024 by Huw Griffiths, Kevin Hughes, Lloyd Peck, Peter Convey
Incomplete species inventories for Antarctica represent a key challenge for comprehensive ecological research and conservation in the region. Additionally, data required to understand population dynamics, rates of evolution, spatial ranges,…1 February, 2024 by Peter Convey
Antarctic ice-free areas are dominated by wind-dispersed organisms. However, which organisms arrive and circulate in Antarctica and how remain poorly understood. Due to their proximity to South America and less…1 February, 2024 by Peter Fretwell
Sea ice, and particularly land-fast sea ice, is crucial for emperor penguins as a breeding and moulting platform and foraging habitat (Barbraud & Weimerskirch 2001). Emperor penguins use land-fast sea…Read more on A 6 year assessment of low sea-ice impacts on emperor penguins [Short Note]
30 January, 2024 by Ryan Williams
Sudden stratospheric warmings (SSWs) are abrupt disturbances to the Northern Hemisphere wintertime stratospheric polar vortex that can lead to pronounced regional changes in surface temperature and precipitation. SSWs also strongly…27 January, 2024 by Jade Reidy, Jenny Wong, Johnathan Ross, Mark Clilverd, Nigel Meredith, Richard Horne, Sarah Glauert, Jade Reidy
High energy electron precipitation from the Earth's radiation belts is important for loss from the radiation belts and atmospheric chemistry. We follow up investigations presented in Reidy et al. (2021,…26 January, 2024 by David Barnes
Introduction: The Arctic sea ice extent in September (when it is at its lowest) has declined 13% Q10 per decade, and the Arctic Ocean is becoming a more Atlantic-influenced system.…26 January, 2024 by Scott Hosking
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data science will play a crucial role in improving environmental sustainability, but the energy requirements of these methods will have an increasingly negative effect on the…Read more on Prioritize environmental sustainability in use of AI and data science methods [Comment]
23 January, 2024 by Dorothea Moser, Liz Thomas
Most of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are covered with firn — the transitional material between snow and glacial ice. Firn is vital for understanding ice-sheet mass balance and…16 January, 2024 by Lloyd Peck, Nicholas Barrett
Reduced seawater salinity as a result of freshwater input can exert a major influence on the ecophysiology of benthic marine invertebrates, such as echinoderms. While numerous experimental studies have explored…12 January, 2024 by Kevin Newsham, Peter Convey
Antarctica and its unique biodiversity are increasingly at risk from the effects of global climate change and other human influences. A significant recent element underpinning strategies for Antarctic conservation has…Read more on Biogeographic survey of soil bacterial communities across Antarctica
11 January, 2024 by Connor Bamford, Jennifer Jackson
South Georgia island in the sub-Antarctic waters of the South Atlantic is where modern whaling began in Southern Ocean waters in the early twentieth century (Tønnessen & Johnsen, 1982). By…9 January, 2024 by Clara Manno, Emily Rowlands
Antarctica is the least populated place on Earth, but the frozen continent and its surrounding Southern Ocean are still affected by human activities. Scientists have found large pieces of plastic…Read more on How Might Plastic Pollution Affect Antarctic Animals?
7 January, 2024 by Nigel Meredith
Energetic electron precipitation (EEP) associated with pulsating aurora can transfer greater than 30 keV electrons from the outer radiation belt region into the upper atmosphere and can deplete atmospheric ozone…Read more on Substorm driven chorus waves: Decay timescales and implications for pulsating aurora
4 January, 2024
The Amundsen Sea has some of the highest thinning rates of ice shelves in Antarctica. This imbalance is caused by changes in ocean melting, induced by warm Circumpolar Deep Water…1 January, 2024 by James Kirkham, Kelly Hogan, Robert Larter
The geological record of landforms and sediments produced beneath deglaciating ice sheets offers insights into inaccessible glacial processes. Large subglacial valleys formed by meltwater erosion of sediments (tunnel valleys) are…1 January, 2024 by Eugene Murphy, Emma Young, Sally Thorpe
Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) is a key species in the marine ecosystem of the Southern Ocean, but is also the target of a commercial fishery, with an important fishing ground…1 January, 2024 by Andrew Kavanagh, Gareth Chisham, Mervyn Freeman
The joint European Space Agency and Chinese Academy of Sciences Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE) mission will explore global dynamics of the magnetosphere under varying solar wind and…Read more on Ground-based and additional science support for SMILE
1 January, 2024 by Kevin Newsham
Societal Impact Statement: Climate change is predicted to increase drought and soil salinity in Mediterranean-type ecosystems (MTEs), posing a significant threat to global food security. Genetic modification of crops to…1 January, 2024 by Peter Convey
Terrestrial environments of Antarctica include some of the most extreme on Earth, challenging the very existence of life itself. This article outlines briefly the geological and biological history of the…1 January, 2024 by Richard Phillips
Mercury (Hg) is a globally important pollutant that can negatively impact metabolic, endocrine and immune systems of marine biota. Seabirds are long-lived marine top predators and hence are at risk…1 January, 2024 by Louise Sime
The impact of melt ponds on sea-ice albedo has been observed and documented. In general circulation models, ponds are now accounted for through indirect diagnostic treatments (‘implicit’ schemes), or prognostic…Read more on The significance of the melt-pond scheme in a CMIP6 global climate model
1 January, 2024 by Connor Bamford, Martin Collins, Philip Hollyman
Patagonian toothfish (Dissostichus eleginoides) are a commercially important species that support a longline fishery at the subantarctic island of South Georgia (CCAMLR Subarea 48.3). Understanding the life history of Patagonian…1 January, 2024 by Paul Holland
Mass loss from the Antarctic Ice Sheet is dominated by basal melting–induced warm ocean water. Ice-sheet mass loss and thinning of buttressing ice shelves occur primarily in the Amundsen and…1 January, 2024 by Katrin Linse
Patellogastropoda, the true limpets, is a major group of gastropods widely distributed in marine habitats from the intertidal to deep sea. Though important for understanding their evolutionary radiation, the phylogenetic…Read more on Phylogenomic analyses reveal a single deep-water colonisation in Patellogastropoda
1 January, 2024 by Elisabeth Biersma, Kevin Newsham, Peter Convey, Will Goodall-Copestake
Glacier retreat in cold regions exposes new terrain for plant colonization. However, the roles of soil microbiomes in plant establishment and performance on newly-exposed forefields have rarely been assessed. Here,…1 January, 2024 by James Kirkham, Kelly Hogan, Robert Larter
Tunnel valleys are widespread in formerly glaciated regions such as the North Sea and record sediment transport beneath ice sheets undergoing deglaciation. However, their complex infill architecture often makes their…1 January, 2024 by Richard Phillips
Stable isotope ratios of carbon (δ13C) and nitrogen (δ15N) were measured in feathers to compare the non-breeding distributions and habitat use of adult brown skuas Stercorarius antarcticus lönnbergi from high-latitude…1 January, 2024 by Jenny Wong, Johnathan Ross, Nigel Meredith, Richard Horne, Sarah Glauert
Relativistic electrons in the Earth's outer radiation belt are a significant space weather hazard. The belt, which lies at altitudes from 13,000 to 40,000 km in the Earth's magnetic equatorial…Read more on New Chorus Diffusion Coefficients for Radiation Belt Modeling
1 January, 2024 by Lloyd Peck
We present the results of our 15th horizon scan of novel issues that could influence biological conservation in the future. From an initial list of 96 issues, our international panel…Read more on A horizon scan of global biological conservation issues for 2024
1 January, 2024 by Oliver Marsh
ABSTRACT. Ice tongues are unconfined by land on their lateral margins and are sensitive to external forcing from the ocean. They are found sporadically around the Antarctic coast but are…Read more on Lateral flexure of Erebus Ice Tongue due to ocean current forcing and fast ice coupling
1 January, 2024
The nitrogen (N) cycle is a familiar concept. As is the much simplified, often diagrammatic, representation commonly used to illustrate the scale, importance and interconnectedness of this global cycle that…Read more on Exploring human-nature relationships in academic literature on the nitrogen cycle
1 January, 2024 by Andrew Kavanagh
This white paper is highly topical as it relates to the upcoming solar wind magnetosphere ionosphere link explorer (SMILE) mission: SMILE is a joint mission between the European Space Agency…1 January, 2024 by Anna Belcher, Simeon Hill
The carbon sequestration potential of open-ocean pelagic ecosystems is vastly under-reported compared to coastal vegetation ‘blue carbon’ systems. Here we show that just a single pelagic harvested species, Antarctic krill,…Read more on Antarctic krill sequester similar amounts of carbon to key coastal blue carbon habitats
1 January, 2024 by Peter Fretwell
These maps showcase Bedmap3, the latest suite of gridded products describing the surface elevation, ice-thickness and the seafloor and subglacial bed elevation of Antarctica south of 60° S. Bedmap3 incorporates…30 December, 2023 by Andrew Orr, Emilia Dobb, Gareth Marshall, Guy Phillips, Hua Lu, John King, Sabina Kucieba, Steve Colwell, Tony Phillips
Meteorological records at Signy Station in the South Orkney Islands (SOIs) have recently been digitized to cover the period of 1947–1995. This study compares the newly available near-surface air temperatures…Read more on Temperature variation in the South Orkney Islands, maritime Antarctic
28 December, 2023 by Kaitlin Naughten
Observed Antarctic sea ice trends up to 2015 have a distinct regional and seasonal pattern, with a loss during austral summer and autumn in the Bellingshausen and Amundsen Seas, and…28 December, 2023 by Dave Munday
From the Eocene (∼50 million years ago) to today, Southern Ocean circulation has evolved from the existence of two ocean gyres to the dominance of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC).…28 December, 2023 by Mervyn Freeman
Solar eclipses present a rare glimpse into the impact of ionospheric electrodynamics on the magnetosphere independent of other well studied seasonal influences. Despite decades of study, we still do not…Read more on Substorms and Solar Eclipses: A Mutual Information Based Study
27 December, 2023 by Peter Convey
A new microcystin-producing mangrove cyanobacterium, Aliinostoc bakau sp. nov., was isolated from a tropical mangrove in Penang, Malaysia, and characterized using combined morphological and phylogenetic approaches. Cultures were established in…21 December, 2023 by Martin Collins
The type series of Poromitra crassiceps (Günther, 1878) was thought to include specimens from four localities in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Southern oceans. Comparison of the extant syntypes with the…21 December, 2023 by Katrin Linse
The marine-based West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is considered vulnerable to irreversible collapse under future climate trajectories, and its tipping point may lie within the mitigated warming scenarios of 1.5°…Read more on Genomic evidence for West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapse during the Last Interglacial
20 December, 2023 by Dave Munday
In contrast with the atmosphere, which is heated from below by solar radiation, the ocean is both heated and cooled from above. To drive a deep-reaching overturning circulation in this…19 December, 2023 by Simeon Hill
Krill habitats in the Southern Ocean are impacted by changing climate conditions, reduced sea ice and rising temperatures. These changes, in turn, affect krill occurrence, physiology and behaviour, which could…Read more on Climate change impacts on Antarctic krill behaviour and population dynamics
16 December, 2023 by Tracey Dornan, Geraint Tarling, Simeon Hill, Tracey Dornan, Tracey Dornan
The fish community of the Scotia Sea is diverse and plays key roles in Antarctic food webs and biogeochemical cycling. However, knowledge of the spatial and community structure of their…15 December, 2023 by Claire Boyle, Kevin Hughes, Laura Gerrish, Peter Convey, Steve Colwell
Antarctica has been subject to widespread, long-term and on-going human activity since the establishment of permanent research stations became common in the 1950s. Equipment may become intentionally or inadvertently lost…14 December, 2023 by Ananth Ranjithkumar
The main nucleating vapor in the atmosphere is thought to be sulfuric acid (H2SO4), stabilized by ammonia (NH3). However, in marine and polar regions, NH3 is generally low, and H2SO4…Read more on Iodine oxoacids enhance nucleation of sulfuric acid particles in the atmosphere
13 December, 2023 by Dani Jones, Emma Boland
Unsupervised classification is becoming an increasingly common method to objectively identify coherent structures within both observed and modelled climate data. However, in most applications using this method, the user must…12 December, 2023 by Gareth Chisham, Mervyn Freeman
We examine the statistical distribution of large-scale Birkeland currents measured by the Active Magnetosphere and Planetary Electrodynamics Response Experiment in four unique categories of geomagnetic activity for the first time:…10 December, 2023 by David Barnes, Claus-Dieter Hillenbrand
The marine habitat beneath Antarctica's ice shelves spans ∼1.6 million km2, and life in this vast and extreme environment is among Earth's least accessible, least disturbed and least known, yet…8 December, 2023 by Andrew Meijers, Povl Abrahamsen, Keith Nicholls, Michael Meredith, Shenjie Zhou
Dense, cold waters formed on Antarctic continental shelves descend along the Antarctic continental margin, where they mix with other Southern Ocean waters to form Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW). AABW then…Read more on Observing Antarctic Bottom Water in the Southern Ocean
7 December, 2023 by Andrew Meijers, Paul Holland, Rachael Sanders
Subantarctic Mode Water (SAMW) forms north of the Subantarctic Front, in regions of deep winter mixed layers, and is important to the absorption and storage of anthropogenic CO2 and heat.…Read more on Sea Ice‐Driven Variability in the Pacific Subantarctic Mode Water Formation Regions
6 December, 2023 by Cecilia Liszka, Pilvi Saarikoski, Sophie Fielding
Pursuing an academic career in marine science requires a range of skills that can be applied across different contexts, including experimental or computational proficiency, policy engagement, teaching, and seagoing fieldwork.…5 December, 2023 by Kate Hendry
The Challenger Society for Marine Science (CSMS) is the learned society for marine scientists based in the United Kingdom, with a membership of over 470 people from >100 institutions, across…5 December, 2023 by Bianca Perren
The Greenland Climate Network (GC-Net) consists of 31 automatic weather stations (AWSs) at 30 sites across the Greenland Ice Sheet. The first site was initiated in 1990, and the project…Read more on The historical Greenland Climate Network (GC-Net) curated and augmented level-1 dataset
4 December, 2023 by Steve Colwell
The Antarctic Peninsula (AP) experienced a new extreme warm event and record-high surface melt in February 2022, rivaling the recent temperature records from 2015 and 2020, and contributing to the…1 December, 2023 by Peter Convey
Current understanding of ecological and evolutionary processes underlying island biodiversity is heavily shaped by empirical data from plants and birds, although arthropods comprise the overwhelming majority of known animal species,…1 December, 2023 by Claire Waluda, Richard Phillips
Knowledge of lampreys during their marine phase is limited, and for the southern hemisphere species was gleaned from their predators (albatrosses) in the 1970s. Taking advantage of new methodologies and…1 December, 2023 by Hannah Cubaynes, Jennifer Jackson, Katherine Green, Peter Fretwell
The combination of very high resolution (VHR) satellite remote sensing imagery and deep learning via convolutional neural networks provides opportunities to improve global whale population surveys through increasing efficiency and…Read more on Gray whale detection in satellite imagery using deep learning
1 December, 2023 by Danielle Buss, Jennifer Jackson
The 20 th century commercial whaling industry severely reduced populations of great whales throughout the Southern Hemisphere. The effect of this exploitation on genetic diversity and population structure remains largely…1 December, 2023 by Stephen Roberts
The glacial and vegetation patterns of Patagonia are strongly correlated to the behaviour of the Southern westerly winds (SWWs) with palaeoenvironmental evidence for the behaviour of the SWWs interpreted as…1 December, 2023 by Andrew Wood, Jaume Forcada, Pete Bucktrout
With environmental change, understanding how species recover from overharvesting and maintain viable populations is central to ecosystem restoration. Here, we reconstruct 90 years of recovery trajectory of the Antarctic fur seal…1 December, 2023 by Claire Waluda, Kevin Hughes
Communication at the science-policy interface can be bewildering not only for early-career researchers, but also for many within the research community. In the context of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean,…1 December, 2023 by Paul Holland
Antarctic sea ice is mostly seasonal. While changes in sea ice seasonality have been observed in recent decades, the lack of process understanding remains a key challenge to interpret these…1 December, 2023 by Bianca Perren, Dominic Hodgson, Stephen Roberts
The southern limit of the Patagonian Ice Sheet at glacial maxima is poorly constrained due to a paucity of field data. This particularly applies to southern outlet glaciers of the…1 December, 2023 by Kevin Newsham
Highly simplified microbial communities colonise rocks and soils of continental Antarctica ice-free deserts. These two habitats impose different selection pressures on organisms, yet the possible filtering effects on the diversity…1 December, 2023 by Andrew Meijers, Rahul Sivankutty
Changing environmental temperatures impact the physiological performance of fishes, and consequently their distributions. A mechanistic understanding of the linkages between experienced temperature and the physiological response expressed within complex natural…1 December, 2023 by Norman Ratcliffe
Advice from avian influenza experts suggests that there is a high risk that highly pathogenic avian influenza will arrive in the Southern Ocean during the austral summers.