Ice Floor, is an immersive exhibition commissioned by engineering consultants Arup. UK born artist Wayne Binitie created the installation.
Archives: Projects
BID
The BAS Transformation Programme is a key driver of change across the organisation. Our ambition is to pull together our in-house expertise to rethink our future ways of working. In …
Towards Net Zero Carbon
Our strategy and work streams to meet Net Zero goals
Transformation
Realising the benefits of the Antarctic Infrastructure Modernisation programme.
Chinstrap Penguin Tracking
The commercial fishery for Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) operates in the southwest Atlantic, in particular along the west Antarctic Peninsula, and over the shelf breaks of the South Shetland Islands, …
Plastic Policy
BAS researchers play leading roles within the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) as chair and members of the Plastic Action Group, a group which aims to assess the current …
Diversity in UK Polar Science Initiative
Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office helping increasing representation of people from under-represented groups engaged in Polar Science.
Bycatch risk of wandering albatrosses from radar detection
Wandering albatrosses are threatened by bycatch. Populations at South Georgia have declined catastrophically since the 1960s due to incidental mortality (bycatch) in fisheries (Pardo et al. 2017) [1]. This led …
South Georgia Right Whale project – Whale Tracking
The British Antarctic Survey whale research team at King Edward Point have been studying whale movements and patterns of habitat use in South Georgia waters. South Georgia was at the …
Water Resources of the Upper Indus Basin
The Indus River Basin feeds the world’s largest system of irrigated agriculture, supporting over 300 million people across India and Pakistan. Demand on freshwater in this region is growing, and …
SEANA
Global shipping is undergoing significant changes. In January 2020 the maximum sulphur emission by ships in international waters will reduce from 3.5% to 0.5% by mass, as a result of …
SSAASI-CLIM
North Sea Methane
Offshore gas fields worldwide are major sources of methane emissions. Developing reliable methods to locate emissions and pinpoint sources is critical for quantifying the volume of methane emissions from gas …
Whole Atmosphere Climate Change
The near-Earth space environment is host to an increasing amount of advanced, satellite-based technology, used for both commercial and scientific purposes. To safeguard this technology and ensure that we can …
SWIGS
Certain ground based technologies, such as electrical power grids, pipelines and railways are susceptible to the effects of Space Weather. Changes in the way the magnetic fields of the …
Polar Ice
The aim of this project is to develop a next generation sea ice information service by integrating and building on a wide range of European and national funded activities which …
WAMSISE
WAMSISE is a three-year project starting in November 2018 and funded through a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action (MSCA) Global Fellowship (H2020-MSCA-IF-GF-2017 no.: 792773 WAMSISE). The evolution of the Antarctic Ice Sheet …
‘Sounds of Space’
Using a Very Low Frequency receiver at Halley Research Station we can pick up radio waves made by our planet. We use these waves to investigate the science of space …
Joule Heating
Society is highly dependent on the fleet of satellites that surround our planet. We rely on them for entertainment, communication, navigation, weather forecasting, and more. Many day-to-day activities, such as …
RAPIDKRILL
Even though the majority of measures to manage the marine environment are relatively fixed or adhere to set formulas (e.g. marine protected areas, total allowable catches and quota setting), the …
Real Projections
Predicting how the climate will change as human activities lead to emission of more greenhouse gases is a global scientific challenge for climate scientists. We use models of the climate …
Halley Automation
Halley Automation This innovative, multi-year, project aims to provide a micro-turbine power supply and datalink to a suite of autonomous scientific instrumentation around the Halley VI Research Station and on …
P-RAID
The ice sheets of Antarctica can be several kilometres thick, and contain precious information about the past climate. However, the bottoms of the ice sheets are melting, erasing this information. …
Gentoo Penguin Tracking
A fishery for Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) operates over the shelf breaks of the South Orkney, South Shetland and South Georgia archipelagos [8]. Krill is an important food source for …
Grey-headed Albatross Juvenile Tracking
The grey-headed albatross is listed as Endangered in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species because of a decline since the 1970s of the largest global breeding population, which is …
Stability and Instability – Records of External Drivers and Resulting Behaviour of Thwaites Glacier
THOR is a ship-based and ice-based project that will examine sedimentary record both offshore from the glacier and beneath the ice shelf, together with glacial landforms on the sea bed, …
Geological History Constraints on the Magnitude of Grounding Line Retreat in the Thwaites Glacier System
GHC (“Geological History Constraints”) will gather information about past ice sheet behaviour and relative sea level change in the Thwaites Glacier system. Determining the timing and magniture of past episodes …
Geophysical Habitat of Subglacial Thwaites
GHOST is an ice-based project which will examine the bed beneath the Thwaites Glacier, to assess whether conditions are likely to allow rapid retreat, or if the retreat may slow …
Melting at Thwaites Grounding Zone and its Control on Sea Level
MELT is an ice-based project that will use autonomous sensors to monitor the ice column and ocean beneath the ice shelf in the critical area of the grounding line (the …
Penguin foraging in a warming ocean
The aim of this project is to learn more about the feeding habits of penguins around the Antarctic Peninsula to understand how their behaviour may be changing as the waters …
International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration
This joint UK-US research programme aims to improve the understanding of the processes affecting ice sheet stability to predict, with more certainty, the future impact of sea-level rise from Thwaites …
Our Research
The study of the last interglacial sea ice requires a cross-disciplinary team of scientists in the fields of climate modelling, sea ice dynamics, and ice/marine sediment cores. The “Retreat …
The Last Interglacial
The Last Interglacial was a period of the Earth’s geological history (between 130 000 and 115 000 years BP) characterized by a climate warmer than today, with a higher global …
Protecting Marine Ecosystems in the South Atlantic
The food security and economies of Tristan da Cunha and St Helena, British overseas territories in the South Atlantic, are heavily reliant on marine harvestable resources and, to a lesser …
DRAGON-WEX
DRAGON-WEX (the DRake pAssaGe and sOuthern oceaN – Wave EXperiment) is a NERC funded standard grant between the University of Bath and the British Antarctic Survey. We will implement and …
Outreach
UK Antarctic Heritage Trust Among our outreach activities, we collaborate with the charity UK Antarctic Heritage Trust to produce inspirational resources for schools. Our objective is to …
Science-Policy Challenges in Polar Conservation and Management
The British Antarctic Survey and the Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI) are convening a series of half day workshops focused on the science-policy interaction within highly topical conservation and management issues. …
ICEGRAV
The ICEGRAV project is a major international collaboration between Danish, US, UK, Norwegian and Argentinian scientists. The primary aim of the project is to carry our airborne gravity observations across …
South Georgia Right Whale project
Long term surveys of the recovery of whales from historical exploitation in South Georgia waters are carried out by the British Antarctic Survey’s “Wild Water Whales” project. At present the …
Larsen-C Benthos
On 12 July 2017, the Larsen-C Ice Shelf calved one of the largest iceberg originating from the Antarctic Peninsula ever recorded. As iceberg A68 moves north, it leaves behind an …
Skua monitoring at Rothera
The small population of south polar skuas (up to 25 pairs) at Rothera Point has been studied since the late 1990s. The initial intention was to monitor possible impacts of …
Extreme Space Weather
Determining the 1 in 100 year space weather event
Virtual Antarctica – Aurora Cambridge Demo VR360
The scans are to demonstrate the capabilities of the VR360 camera technology and allow viewers to walk around parts of our station in a virtual world. Going forward, such spaces will be …
Virtual Antarctica – JCR Demo VR360
VR360 scans onboard RRS James Clark Ross The scans are to demonstrate the capabilities of the VR360 camera technology and allow viewers to walk around parts of our station in a …
Virtual Antarctica – Bird Island Demo VR360
VR360 scans at Bird Island Research Station to show the main station building and Generator Shed. The scans are to demonstrate the capabilities of the VR360 camera technology and allow viewers …
Virtual Antarctica – Signy Demo VR360
VR360 scans at Signy Research Station to show the main station building and Generator Shed. The scans are to demonstrate the capabilities of the VR360 camera technology and allow viewers to …
CMIP6
Header image from V. Eyring et al.: Overview of the CMIP6 experimental design and organization. https://www.geosci-model-dev.net/9/1937/2016/gmd-9-1937-2016.pdf The Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) coordinates and designs global climate model simulations of …
News
Paleogene Climate and Deep-water Evolution in the Southwest Atlantic
This project will tackle the the question of how strongly changes in ocean circulation affect global climate. The study is being carried out in collaboration with Dr Steve Bohaty and …
ApRES and groundwater
The aim of this study is to investigate whether a technique developed to measure the basal meltrate of ice shelves can be used to monitor groundwater in arid and semi-arid …
Higher Predators – Signy Island – Penguin monitoring
Three species of penguin breed on Signy Island: Adélie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae), chinstrap penguins (Pygoscelis antarcticus) and gentoo penguins (Pygoscelis papua). These species have contrasting breeding and foraging strategies and …
Higher Predators – Bird Island – Penguin monitoring
Two species of penguin breed on Bird Island: macaroni penguins (Eudyptes chrysolophus) and gentoo penguins (Pygoscelis papua). These species have contrasting breeding and foraging strategies and ranging behaviour. Gentoo penguins …
Higher Predators – Bird Island – Seal monitoring
There are three seal species that commonly come ashore (haul out) at Bird Island, to breed, moult, and rest: Antarctic fur seal (Arctocephalus gazella), southern elephant seal (Mirounga leonina) and …
Higher Predators – Bird Island – Albatrosses and giant petrel monitoring
Four species of albatross breed in large numbers on Bird Island: wandering albatross (Diomedea exulans), black-browed albatross (Thalassarche melanophris), grey-headed albatross (T. chrysostoma) and light-mantled albatross (Phoebetria palpebrata). Although all …
Modelling Movement of Antarctic Krill
The MMAK project is using state-of-the-art ocean-sea ice models to improve our understanding of processes that influence the distribution of krill in the South Orkney Islands region.
Higher Predators – Long-Term Science
The British Antarctic Survey carries out Long Term Science that measures changes in Antarctic ecosystems and seeks to understand the underlying drivers and processes. Marine predators are sensitive to changes …
Impact of Plastic in the Polar Regions
An estimated 75% of all the litter in our oceans is plastic, and around 5 million tonnes of plastic waste enter the ocean annually. Scientific observations of a significant concentration …
Virtual Antarctica
Virtual Antarctica … journey beyond
SONATA
The Southern Ocean is one of the most important and poorly understood components of the global carbon cycle that profoundly shapes Earth’s climate. It is the primary hot spot for …
Orographic Flows and the Climate of the Antarctic Peninsula (OFCAP)
OFCAP is an integrated programme of field observations, analysis and modelling aimed at understanding how the westerly winds in the Antarctic Peninsula interact with the mountains and influence the climate …
Joint Airborne Study of the Peninsula Region (JASPER)
JASPER brings together two of the best equipped Polar meteorology instrumented aircraft and teams to study boundary layer meteorology in the Antarctic Peninsula and Weddell Sea. A joint project between …
Building data resources for managing the South Georgia & South Sandwich Islands Marine Protected Area
The South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands (SGSSI) Marine Protected Area (MPA) was established by the Government of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands in 2012, to ensure the …
Iceland Greenland seas Project
PI: Ian Renfrew (University of East Anglia) CO-I’s: Tom Bracegirdle, Tom Lachlan-Cope, Alexandra Weiss PDRA’s: Andrew Elvidge (University of East Anglia), James Pope NERC Grant: NE/N009924/1 Project Partners: Robert Pickart …
National Capability for Global Challenges
Polar Expertise – Supporting Development
Space Weather Observatory
Assessing Space Weather impacts
OFIC
Antarctic ice-loss research capability
THeMES
The thermosphere is the uppermost layer of our atmosphere at the edge of space (85 to 1000 km altitude). Within this region orbit thousands of satellites worth billions of pounds …
Data As Art
DATA AS ART is an ongoing science & art project in development at NERC’s British Antarctic Survey (BAS). It visualises science data (in its widest definition), to create stunning and …
60 Second Science
We’ve challenged our science, engineering and support staff and their research collaborators to explain in 60 seconds what they do. Decide for yourself if they have met the challenge well! …
Scotia Sea open-ocean biological laboratories
Sustained ocean observing programme
POETS-WCB
The main deliverable of the Western Core Box (WCB) is a consistent unique time series of mesoscale distribution and abundance of macro-zooplankton and micronekton, and an understanding of the physical …
Wildlife from Space
Many populations of wildlife are remote, inaccessible or difficult to monitor. The advent of sub-metre, Very-High-Resolution (VHR) satellite imagery may enable us study these animals in a much more efficient …
Rad-Sat
Rad-Sat is a NERC Highlight Topic that brings together a consortium of scientists from 5 different UK research groups, stakeholders from the space industry and a network of international collaborators. …
SO-AntEco Biodiversity
In this collaboration with the Natural History Museum (NHM) and the University of Liverpool, we have developed novel methods for using existing data to contribute to marine conservation and fisheries …
Using an Antarctic fungus as a wintertime biopesticide
Can a fungus from an Antarctic soil be used to control weevil larvae causing damage to UK soft fruits and forestry? The larvae of weevils, which overwinter in soil and …
SuperDARN
The Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN) has been operating as an international co-operative organisation for over 25 years, and has proved to be one of the most successful tools …
COMICS
Investigating the twilight zone The four-year COMICS project, is led by the National Oceanography Centre, is a collaboration between the British Antarctic Survey and the universities of Queen Mary London, …
Brunt Ice Shelf movement
British Antarctic Survey is monitoring cracks on the Brunt Ice Shelf. Find out how here
SubICE
The Sub-Antarctic – ice coring expedition (SubICE), part of the international Antarctic Circumnavigation Expedition (ACE), successfully drilled several shallow ice cores, from five of the remote and globally significant sub-Antarctic …
Rothera Research Station Modernisation
Over the next decade Rothera Research Station will be upgraded to ensure its facilities keep the UK at the forefront of climate, biodiversity and ocean research.
Impact of Melt on Ice Shelf Dynamics and Stability (MIDAS)
Project MIDAS (Impact of Melt on Ice Shelf Dynamics And Stability) is a UK-based Antarctic research project, investigating the effects of a warming climate on the Larsen C ice shelf …
Signy Research Station Modernisation
Modernising the UK’s summer-only Antarctic research station
King Edward Point Research Station Modernisation
New mooring and boating facilities for South Georgia’s fisheries research station
Bird Island Research Station Modernisation
A new jetty and logistics facilities for Bird Island
Methane Observations and Yearly Assessments
Methane is one of the most important greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and changes in its concentration could have major influences on the Earth’s climate. Measurements made around the world …
Previously Released Data
Version 1.0 Data, released April 2010 Version 1.0 was superceeded by version 1.1 in June 2010. In version 1.0, a maximum of 20 iterations was used in the least-squares curve …
Auroral Boundary Location Method
To estimate the poleward and equatorward boundaries of auroral emissions, we perform the following steps: Step 1 – Get an IMAGE FUV image The website maintained by the IMAGE …
OCB Correction Values
Poleward boundaries of the auroral oval derived from satellite images of the aurora, such as those that we have estimated using the method described, can provide a reasonable approximation of …
SI13 Boundary Data
All Available SI13 Boundaries May 2000 – October 2002 Monthly Boundaries Individual files from May 2000 to Oct 2002. Download Individual files from May 2000 to Oct 2002.
SI12 Boundary Data
All Available SI12 Boundaries May 2000 – October 2002 Monthly Boundaries Individual files from May 2000 to Oct 2002. Download Individual files from May 2000 to Oct 2002.
WIC Boundary Data
All Available WIC Boundaries May 2000 – October 2002 Monthly Boundaries Individual files from May 2000 to Oct 2002. There are no WIC boundaries available for Apr 2001. Download Individual …
IMAGE Auroral Boundary Data
The objective of this project was to investigate whether magnetic reconnection in the space environment has a characteristic scale in space and time by characterising statistically the spatial and temporal …
Seismic investigation of a subglacial lake
Field Team includes: Alex Brisbourne (BAS), Andrés Rivera (CECs), Rodrigo Zamora (CECs), Field Guide (BAS). Antarctic subglacial lakes contain unique records of ice sheet history and microbial life; they may …
Beyond Epica
A decade ago, the European EPICA project completed drilling a deep ice core at Dome C, revealing the close link between climate and atmospheric greenhouse gases over the past 800,000 …
The Global Electric Circuit
Weather and climate prediction are inevitably limited by incomplete knowledge of the Earth system and its external influences. One under-explored and consequently controversial area of research is the meteorological influence …
Maps
The KRILLBASE density data indicates the relative probability of occurrence for both Antarctic krill and salps at the circumpolar scale and at finer scales in well-sampled areas such as the …
Publications
KRILLBASE data have been used in a range of peer-reviewed publications Click here to search Google Scholar for the key word “KRILLBASE”. Click here to link to the NERC Open …
KRILLBASE
KRILLBASE is a data rescue and compilation project which aims to improve the availability of information on two of the Southern Ocean’s most important zooplankton taxa: Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) …
A new polar research ship for Britain: project delivery
A new research platform to put UK scientists at the forefront of polar science