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Hunt begins for Antarctica's oldest ice

Hunt begins for Antarctica's oldest ice

Science | Ice and Snow
Monday December 19, 2022

U.S. researchers on the southernmost continent are in the midst of their first field season of a multi-year project to find and extract the oldest ice in Antarctica.


Antarctic ice cores help pinpoint timing of human arrival in New Zealand

Antarctic ice cores help pinpoint timing of human arrival in New Zealand

Science | Ice and Snow
Monday December 20, 2021

Scientific detective work has helped researchers determine when humans first arrived in New Zealand, one of the last places on Earth to be settled.


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Aug
09
2021

Warm Ocean Water is Eroding Thwaites Ice Shelf From Below

Science | Ice and Snow

Scientists got their first glimpse at the ocean conditions surrounding the Thwaites Ice Shelf in 2019, and recently published results are worrisome for the rapidly melting ice shelf and the glacier behind it.


Jul
12
2021

Radar Satellites Spot Dangerous Crevasses Humans Can't See

Science | Ice and Snow

Antarctic researchers and support staff can now more easily find and avoid dangerous crevasses on long traverses carrying supplies to remote camps and stations, thanks to the help of a German radar satellite.


Jun
30
2021

Ice core tells 11,000-year history of explosive volcanic eruptions

Science | Ice and Snow

An ice core from West Antarctica is giving scientists insight into some intriguing climate anomalies of ages past and deepening the mystery of a volcanic eruption that destroyed a Greek island some 3,600 years ago.


May
17
2021

Thwaites Glacier - Future

Science | Ice and Snow

The massive Thwaites Glacier on the coast of West Antarctica is falling to pieces because of climate change. Shifting ocean currents are bringing warm sea water up under its vulnerable underside, melting out the ice at its base and accelerating its movement into the ocean.


May
03
2021

Thwaites Glacier - Present

Science | Ice and Snow

Thwaites Glacier is melting fast because of climate change, causing sea levels to rise the world over. Of all the world's glaciers, it's the one that scientists are most worried that a catastrophic collapse could happen quickly and affect coastal regions everywhere.


Apr
21
2021

Thwaites Glacier - Past

Science | Ice and Snow

Antarctica's massive Thwaites Glacier is melting because of climate change, and if it collapses completely, could add about two feet to global sea level. Glaciologists are tracking it with alarm, as Thwaites has lost a tremendous amount of mass over recent decades, but its remote location in West Antarctica makes getting an up-close look at it extremely difficult.


Jul
13
2020

Where the Ice Layers Grow

Science | Ice and Snow

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.


Jan
26
2020

Hunting For the Oldest Ice

Science | Ice and Snow

For scientists, ice cores are an indispensable window into the past. A research team using ancient ice recovered from Antarctica, announced recently that they'd identified some of the oldest air samples ever discovered, as far back as 2 million years ago, and that they're going back for more.


Nov
05
2019

SALSA Part I: Scratching the Surface

Science | Ice and Snow

A team of researchers and drilling engineers recently spent six weeks in West Antarctica carefully drilling through nearly a mile of ice to study Mercer Subglacial Lake. This body of water is buried under an ice stream, and likely hasn't seen the light of day for at least thousands and possibly hundreds of thousands, of years.


Mar
18
2019

The First Wave of the "Thwaites Invasion"

Science | Ice and Snow

The U.S. and U.K.-funded International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (ITGC) officially kicked off its science field research in January, when four researchers and their support teams set foot on a remote, fast-melting glacier in West Antarctica, establishing a beachhead for an unprecedented international project to determine the glacier's fate.


Jul
26
2018

Buried Treasure

Science | Ice and Snow

A team of researchers has brought home samples of some of the oldest ice ever discovered, more than twice as old as most previous samples. In the remote Ong Valley, the team drilled into a bed of ice - that first fell as snow two million years ago, or more.


Jun
27
2018

IceBridge Flies High

Science | Ice and Snow

In late 2017, a specially modified airplane contracted by NASA crisscrossed Antarctica, mapping the ice below and filling in a data gap left by a now-defunct NASA satellite called ICESat, which measured the elevation of the ice surface using a laser. Operation IceBridge flights are bridging the gap between ICESat and its successor, ICESat-2.


Feb
14
2018

Circumnavigating the Pole Hole

Science | Ice and Snow

In January, researchers went for a more than 750-kilometer drive around the South Pole. The team followed the arc of the 88th parallel for a quarter of its distance ringing the South Pole. Their cargo was a sensitive GPS unit to record the exact elevation of the ice sheet they drove over. The effort is in support of NASA's ICESat-2 satellite, a mission devoted to measuring ice levels around the world, particularly in the polar regions.


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