Feb
15
2021
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On the Wings of Petrels
Ecologist Donna Fraser carefully makes her way across a low rocky ridge towards a mass of gray feathers with a beak. It's the baby chick of a southern giant petrel.
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Feb
01
2021
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Counting on Seals
Seal science in Antarctica continues, even as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the world. Fewer researchers and support staff traveled to Antarctica in 2020 to reduce the risk of introducing the virus to the continent. One of the few science teams that did go is working on the long-term study of Weddell seals in McMurdo Sound.
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Jan
18
2021
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Weddell Seals Sing Songs Humans Can't Hear
The seals of McMurdo Sound are more vocal than previously thought. A new research paper published in the December edition of The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America shows that Weddell seals vocalize underwater at frequencies too high for humans to hear.
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Dec
14
2020
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A Bot in the Ocean
During the past austral summer, scientists released an autonomous seafaring robot into the Southern Ocean. For four months, the small "Wave Glider" navigated the frigid Antarctic waters, collecting data on the surrounding ocean and atmosphere.
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Nov
30
2020
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An Aerial Assessment of Adelie Penguins
Flying robots are helping scientists track the population of Adelie Penguins. This past austral summer, researchers flew a small fleet of coordinated unmanned aerial vehicles, or "UAVs," over Cape Crozier, one of the largest Adelie penguin colonies in the world, photographing it in greater detail than ever before.
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Oct
12
2020
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Southernmost Telescope Gets an Array of Upgrades
One of the telescopes at the bottom of the world is getting a major upgrade. The South Pole's venerable Keck Array is being reconstituted into the more powerful BICEP Array, making it more sensitive and better able to observe the most ancient light in the universe.
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Sep
28
2020
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Heavy Cosmic Rays - Part II: The Death and Life of SuperTIGER-II
The season before SuperTIGER-II's successful 2019 flight, the payload had an unexpectedly short flight over Antarctica. Brought down after less than a day because of a problem with the balloon carrying it, it landed in a crevasse field 150 miles from McMurdo Station. This could easily have ended in calamity. Instead, it led to one of the most daring and complicated recoveries of a long-duration balloon payload in recent memory.
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Sep
14
2020
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Heavy Cosmic Rays - Part I: The Flight of SuperTIGER-II
In December 2019, SuperTIGER clawed its way back into the upper atmosphere. The second flight of the SuperTIGER cosmic ray experiment, officially dubbed SuperTIGER-II, flew high above the icy continent for more than a month, collecting data on the high-energy particles that zip through the cosmos.
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Sep
01
2020
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Detecting Anomalous Life Swarms
The seas around Antarctica are alive, but that life is not evenly distributed everywhere. Vast regions of barren ocean are punctuated by oases of concentrated nutrients that create hotspots of biological activity.
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Jul
28
2020
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Chasing Aerosol Ghosts
For a big mass of air, the Earth's upper atmosphere is a complicated place. The changing seasons cause temperatures and pressures to rise and fall, altering the characteristics of the planet's atmospheric layers, sometimes dramatically.
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Jul
13
2020
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Where the Ice Layers Grow
Hunting for the perfect patch of ice can be a herculean task. Knut Christianson, of the University of Washington, spent three weeks with his research team in a barren and remote part of Antarctica, scouring the landscape for the perfect spot.
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Jun
29
2020
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Insects in the Extreme
Scientists are taking a close look at Antarctica's largest land animal. It's a small insect called the Antarctic midge, and they don't grow much bigger than a fingernail.
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May
26
2020
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Pumping Iron
Cold, hard iron is on the move. Particles of the ferrous metal are trickling into Antarctica's oceans, and marine algae are gobbling it up.
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Cruising for Mollusks
Charting a Genetic Sea Change
