The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI) are convening a series of workshops in 2017-18 on Science-Policy Challenges in Polar Conservation and Management. Each of the workshops …
Tag: Antarctica
SCIENCE IN THE SEA: Ocean sampling day at Rothera
27 July, 2017 Zoe Waring
Zoe Waring, the Rothera Marine Assistant provides us with an account of the recent Ocean Sampling Day at Rothera. Since 2012, the Rothera Marine Assistant has been collecting samples for World …
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Midwinter’s Day 2017
21 June, 2017
As darkness cloaks Antarctica, science and support staff wintering across the white continent will today celebrate Midwinter’s Day – the shortest day in the Austral winter. With some staff experiencing …
Operational facilities – RRS Sir David Attenborough
Boats, cargo, helideck and hangar
Penguin colony repeatedly decimated by volcanic eruptions
11 April, 2017
One of Antarctica’s biggest gentoo penguin colonies was repeatedly decimated by eruptions of the Deception Island volcano in recent millennia.
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Exploring South Georgia’s seafloor fauna with SQUID
21 March, 2017 Katrin Linse
I recently spent four-and-a-bit weeks aboard the German blue water research ship RV Meteor along with Oli Hogg, my PhD student. We took part in the “Methane South Georgia” research …
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Lyme Regis Fossil Festival 2017
Fossil Festival A5 2017 Do you have what it takes to be a polar explorer? Think the poles are just dead, icy wastes? Think again! Join the British Antarctic Survey, …
Giant iceberg set to calve from Larsen C Ice Shelf
6 January, 2017
A huge iceberg, roughly the size of Norfolk, looks set to break away from the Larsen C ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula. Larsen C is more than twice the size …
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Double New Year Honours for British Antarctic Survey Directors
31 December, 2016
Two leading polar scientists at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) have received awards in the 2017 New Year Honours list from Her Majesty the Queen. BAS Director, Professor Jane Francis, …
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New study shows when Pine Island Glacier retreat began
23 November, 2016
New study reveals when West Antarctica’s largest glacier started retreating Reporting this week (Wednesday 23 November) in the journal Nature an international team led by British Antarctic Survey (BAS) explains …
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Iceberg scouring disturbs carbon-fixing seafloor ecosystems
27 October, 2016
Shallow-water ecosystems are a major carbon sink, as many species living on the seafloor use carbon to build their tissue and shells. This carbon can become part of seafloor sediment …
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SHIP BLOG: Heading for home
31 March, 2016 Susie Grant
The ship’s science labs have all been packed up and cleaned, kit boxes stowed in the container, cargo paperwork finished and cruise reports written. The SO-AntEco team is ready to …
SHIP BLOG: Science Week questions answered from the Southern Ocean
23 March, 2016 Susie Grant
Last week was UK Science Week, and we asked schools and anyone else who had burning questions about the Antarctic deep sea to send them to us here on the …
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ANTARCTIC BLOG: Extreme Geology #9
29 January, 2016 Iain Rudkin
January the twenty sixth. My pre-deployment brief suggested that I should currently be partaking of all the luxuries Rothera Research Station has to offer. Enjoying that period of self-satisfaction which …
ANTARCTIC BLOG: Extreme Geology #8
27 January, 2016 Joanne Johnson
Reflections from the ANiSEED team in Marie Byrd Land Field Guide Al Docherty recounts his most memorable day of the field season so far: “7am the alarm goes off. I look …
ANTARCTIC BLOG: Extreme Geology #7
27 January, 2016 Joanne Johnson
Every person who works in Antarctica has a different experience and takes away different memories because our perception is shaped so much by our previous life experiences. The four of …
ANTARCTIC BLOG: Extreme Geology #6
11 January, 2016 Joanne Johnson
The challenges of glacier travel The ANiSEED project field area lies between two of the most rapidly changing glaciers in Antarctica, the Smith and Kohler Glaciers. These have thinned more …
FEATURED PAPER: Improving air quality models
13 October, 2015
Recent research in polar and non-polar regions showed that sun-lit snow packs are important chemical reactors and reservoirs, which strongly influence air quality of the lower atmosphere and likely also …
Past Westerly Winds
The behaviour of the westerly wind belt (see Figure 1a) over the Southern Ocean during cold glacial periods has been debated for many years. These winds matter because explanations of …
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 …
Understanding Earth’s response to a future high CO2 world
To assess the wider impact of global climate changes on the environment we are investigating intervals of deep geological time that provide clues about the evolution and sensitivity of organisms …
Patterns and mechanisms of late glacial and Holocene climate change
We aim to detect patterns and mechanisms of late glacial and Holocene climate change and to place recent human impacts on the Earth’s climate system in the context of long …
Ocean-driven ice-shelf thinning in Antarctica
By exploiting advances in ice sheet modelling, and new Antarctic-wide datasets, this project aims to predict how far and how fast the observed ocean-driven thinning of floating ice shelves will …
RAID
Ice cores take a long time to collect. The 3.4 km- ice core drilled at Dome Concordia (Antarctica) took 5 years to collect and encloses the oldest ice drilled so …
Ice Sheet Modelling
The research of the ice sheet modelling group focuses on integrating observational data with dynamical models that describe how the ice flows in order to improve our representation of how …
Climate and Ice during the Last Interglacial
During the Last Interglacial (129-116 thousand years ago, ka) CO2 and global temperature were both higher than they were before human industrialisation. By examining Last Interglacial climate, we thus gain …
Antarctic Climate over the last millennia
The Antarctic Peninsula and West Antarctica have warmed dramatically in recent decades, with some climate records indicating that these are among the most rapidly warming regions on Earth. The Antarctic …
Glacial history and ice sheet sensitivity to climate change
The biggest uncertainty in predictions of sea-level rise is what the contribution will be from the great ice sheets on Antarctica and Greenland as climate warms. Improving knowledge on the …
Impacts of Ocean Acidification on Sea-Surface
In order to assess the impact of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) on the oceans today we are investigating the effect of decreasing upper ocean pH on calcifying zooplankton. Pteropods, …
Impact of global disturbances on evolution of polar life
Why does global biodiversity show such a steep increase just as climates were deteriorating?
Depositional patterns and records in sediment drifts off the Antarctic Peninsula and West Antarctica
The biggest uncertainty in predictions of sea-level rise is what the contribution will be from the great ice sheets on Antarctica and Greenland as climate warms. The West Antarctic Ice …
Role of oceanic forcing in West Antarctic Ice Sheet retreat
Ocean temperature has been identified as a key driver of current ice sheet retreat in the Amundsen Sea sector of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), yet its long-term history …
EU-PolarNet
A strategic framework to connect science and society
ASCCC
The ASCCC Project has been funded by ACE (Antarctic Circumnavigation Expedition) to investigate, quantify and understand the role of polar and subpolar seabeds in the carbon cycle, particularly in response …