Past climate


The Big Thaw

The Big Thaw is an ambitious new UKRI/NERC-funded Highlight Topic project assessing past, present and future changes in global mountain water resources by studying snow/ice accumulation and melt in the …


SIWHA

The NERC funded SIWHA_CO2 project “Sea Ice and Westerly winds during the Holocene in coastal Antarctica, to better constrain oceanic CO2 uptake” will be a breakthrough in our understanding of how …




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 …


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 …


Meteorology and Ozone Monitoring

Long-term meteorological and ozone observations and data help determine the causes of climate change in the polar regions. Meteorology Meteorological observations are made regularly throughout the day at Halley and …


Weddell Sea ice sheet and climate

In the south of the Weddell Sea lies the Ronne and Filchner Ice Shelves. During the coldest part of the last glacial period about 25,000 years ago, the ice in …



DNA reveals unique microorganisms evolved at poles

14 February, 2024

Communities of microorganisms at the bottom of polar lakes evolved independently from other regions, influenced by the particular geological, biological and climate history of their regions. The unique character of …


Octopus DNA solves mystery of ice sheet’s past

22 December, 2023

Scientists, including from British Antarctic Survey, have used octopus DNA to discover that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) likely collapsed during the Last Interglacial period around 120,000 years ago …




Drilling of oldest ice on Earth completed

18 February, 2022

The first ice core drilling campaign of Beyond Epica-Oldest Ice has been successfully completed at the remote Little Dome C site in Antarctica – one of the most extreme places …


Mission to drill Antarctica’s oldest ice

30 November, 2021

The first campaign to drill Antarctica’s oldest ice starts this month (November). Beyond EPICA-Oldest Ice aims to drill an ice core to collect a record of past climate spanning 1.5 million years