Jan
08
2018
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Quantifying Snowfall
Snow in some form or another blankets almost all Antarctica, but measuring exactly how much snow falls from the sky is tricky. A team of researchers recently set up four newly-developed precipitation observatories near McMurdo Station to better measure how much snow falls in the region.
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May
24
2017
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Methane Munching Microbes
VIDEO: Five years ago, a plume of natural methane started seeping out of the seafloor near McMurdo Station, providing researchers an unprecedented chance to study the formation and development of colonies of microorganisms that rely on methane for nourishment.
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Jan
04
2017
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The Cosmic Dust Sucker
The Earth is constantly showered with micrometeorites, every minute of every day. These interstellar particles are no bigger than a grain of sand, but are falling out of the sky everywhere. Collecting this cosmic dust, and separating it from terrestrial contamination, has led scientists to the most remote corner of the planet.
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Jul
11
2016
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A Robotic Rehearsal for Interplanetary Exploration
It is no small undertaking to design and build a 25-foot-long underwater robot, launch it through a narrow hole drilled through 20 feet of sea ice, allow it to maneuver autonomously through several kilometers of Antarctic Ocean for hours at a time and program it to pilot itself back to within a few feet of where it started. The simple part is that it at least takes place on planet Earth.
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May
12
2016
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Keeping Scientists AWARE of the West Antarctic Climate
AWARE, the ARM West Antarctic Radiation Experiment (AWARE) is a part of the Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program (ARM). The National Science Foundation (NSF), which manages the U.S. Antarctic Program is facilitating its installation. The cluster of white shipping containers perched atop the hill near McMurdo Station may well represent the densest cluster of weather monitors Antarctica has ever seen.
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May
04
2016
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The Southern Ocean's Carbon Sink Stronger than Ever
The waters around Antarctica seem to have reversed a troubling trend. Bucking predictions, observations now show that the Southern Ocean is pulling more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere than ever recorded, which could have implications for predicting the rate of climate change.
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Oct
28
2015
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El Nino in Antarctica
If the weather at the bottom of the world seems a little out of whack this year, blame El Nino. Every few years, the ocean around the eastern and central Pacific warms a few degrees, disrupting weather patterns across the ocean from Alaska to Antarctica. Scientists at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration are predicting that this year's El Nino will be a particularly strong one.
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Dec
05
2014
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Salt Spray
A team of atmospheric scientists, led by Lars Kalnajs at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Peter DeCarlo at Drexel University, are making some of the first real-time measurements of aerosol size and composition in Antarctica.
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Oct
09
2014
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Expansion
Sea ice around Antarctica appears headed for another record year. NSIDC, partly funded by the National Science Foundation, reported that the five-day average for sea ice extent around the southernmost continent last month had already surpassed 20 million square kilometers for the first time in the modern satellite record.
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Sep
11
2014
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High-Water Mark
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is providing support to help launch a $21 million interdisciplinary initiative involving 11 institutions across the United States to study the Southern Ocean around Antarctica.
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Aug
15
2014
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Record High
A warm winter at the South Pole helped make 2013 as the year with highest annually averaged temperature since records began there nearly 60 years ago. Meanwhile, the extent of sea ice around Antarctica continued to expand to record levels for reasons that are still being debated.
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May
08
2014
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Converging Factors
The phrase "going with the flow" takes on a different meaning for scientists studying how tides along the Antarctic Peninsula influence where Adelie penguins go to forage for food during their breeding cycle.
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Mar
20
2014
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Tall Order
Sound like an awesome trip? Snowmobile to the middle of nowhere, set up camp and fly radio-controlled airplanes. Now take that same scenario and move it to Antarctica, where scientists used radio-controlled airplanes to investigate a region of the atmosphere integral in understanding and predicting the weather.
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Icefin Tests the Waters
New Ocean Floats Deepen a Carbon-Cycle Mystery
