Over the past 40 years, ice cores have revealed more about climate change than any other scientific technique. Over the last few decades, satellites have detected changes to the amount of sea ice that covers the polar oceans. Since 1979 summer sea-ice extent in the Arctic has reduced at 10% per decade. Some major glaciers that drain the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets have accelerated by as much as 50%.

AGAP

Exploring Antarctica’s ‘ghost mountains’

ANiSEED

This project will reconstruct millennial-scale ice sheet change in the western Amundsen Sea Embayment, Antarctica, using high-precision exposure dating.

A snow covered mountain.

Filchner Ice Shelf System, Antarctica

Understanding the contribution that polar ice sheets make to global sea-level rise is recognised internationally as urgent.  The mission of this five-year project is to capture new observations and data …

The break up of Wilkins Ice Shelf

PRESS RELEASE: Ocean currents driving ice loss

25 April, 2012

Warm ocean currents cause majority of ice loss from Antarctica Reporting this week (Thursday 26 April) in the journal Nature, an international team of scientists led by British Antarctic Survey …

A group of people in the snow.

PRESS RELEASE: Study of largest glacier

5 December, 2011

Scientist on BBC Frozen Planet investigates how world’s largest glacier is contributing to sea-level rise A team of scientists from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) is to survey the largest glacier …

PRESS RELEASE: Glacier’s melt rate quickens

27 June, 2011

Warm ocean speeds melting of Antarctic glacier New results from an investigation into a large glacier in Antarctica and its impact on global sea level rise are published this week …

PRESS RELEASE: Greenland drilling progress

2 August, 2010

Greenland Ice Core Team Reaches Bedrock Bedrock has been reached Tuesday July 27 2010 at the deep ice core drilling site North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling (NEEM) on the Greenland …

A large body of water.

PRESS RELEASE: Ice thinning captured by satellites

23 September, 2009

Lasers from space show thinning of Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets The most comprehensive picture of the rapidly thinning glaciers along the coastline of both the Antarctic and Greenland ice …

A tent in the snow.

PRESS RELEASE: 3D map aids ice flow estimates

20 July, 2009

New research provides insight into ice sheet behaviour A new study published this week takes scientists a step further in their quest to understand how Antarctica’s vast glaciers will contribute …