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The scientists and drillers set up camp at the foot of Mount Tidd in the Pirrit Hills.

Ancient Ice Levels
Science / Ice and Snow
Thursday April 20, 2017
Today, a massive sheet of ice covers nearly all of West Antarctica, but it hasn't always been that way. Over the past few hundred thousand years, researchers think that the ice sheets have waxed and waned, varying in size as the region's climate changed. To gather evidence of how dynamic the ice cover has been in the past, John Stone of the University of Washington and his team traveled to a remote region of the continent this past season.

Researcher Erin Pettit (left) and guide Phil 'Chucky' Stevens take notes while looking over the ice covering the Scar Inlet.

Capturing a Collapse
Science / Ice and Snow
Tuesday September 27, 2016
Not much remains of the Larsen B Ice Shelf, but what is left can teach scientists a lot about how mighty masses of ice fall apart, especially when its last lingering sliver finally crumbles. Researchers traveled to the Scar Inlet along the Antarctic Peninsula to study the remnants of the former ice shelf in February to better understand the peril that glaciers around Antarctica are facing.

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Jul 05 2016	Science / Ice and Snow Little Pieces of Outer Space on the Frozen Continent The Antarctic ice is home to stuff "not of this Earth." Each year, scientists travel to remote sections of the frozen continent to look for these pieces of outer space. They're hunting for meteorites; the charred remains of asteroids and other space debris that fell to Earth. This year, after five weeks out in the field, the eight-person Antarctic Search for Meteorites (ANSMET) team returned with 569 likely meteorites.
Apr 12 2016	Science / Ice and Snow Getting to the Bottom of SPICECORE The South Pole Ice Core project, known more succinctly as SPICECORE, wrapped up its two-year drilling effort at the South Pole in late January, having exceeded even their most ambitious goals. Researchers collected ice samples from 1,751 meters (5,744 feet) below the surface, more than 200 meters (656 feet) deeper than their original target.
Feb 24 2016	Science / Ice and Snow An Airborne Look Through the Ice Though researchers at McMurdo Station have been studying the Ross Ice Shelf for decades, the seafloor beneath it largely remains a mystery. Scientists with the ROSETTA mapping project are working to fill in one of the largest remaining blank spots on ocean charts.
Jun 08 2015	Science / Ice and Snow Good Things Come in Small Packages Led by scientists from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, IcePod bundles together a suite of instruments into a capsule designed to provide new details about structures above, within and below Antarctica's ice-covered surface.
Mar 26 2015	Science / Ice and Snow Going Deep The South Pole is a very cold place, with an average annual temperature of around minus 50 degrees Celsius. Even the ice is especially cold at the bottom of the world. And that's a good thing for a team of researchers interested in extracting the first deep ice core at the South Pole.
Mar 13 2015	Science / Ice and Snow Search for Ancient Ice For more than a quarter-century, David Marchant, a Boston University professor, has been exploring the Transantarctic Mountains, methodically piecing together the story of the landscape and past climate change and what it has to tell us about the future of our warming planet.
Jan 09 2015	Science / Ice and Snow Two for One The most ambitious and extensive network of seismographs ever deployed on an ice shelf promises to reveal new information about two very different subjects.
Nov 27 2014	Science / Ice and Snow Moon over McMurdo The interface between water and ice on the underside of the McMurdo Ice Shelf is where Antarctica and Europa intersect in terms of how conditions at the former may help future exploration of Jupiter's icy moon nearly 400 million miles away.
Oct 23 2014	Science / Ice and Snow Rough Terrain The Ross Ice Shelf holds back enough ice from entering the ocean to raise sea level by several meters. The weird dynamics of an area called the shear zone has a team of researchers concerned that its potential instability could have long-term repercussions for the Ross Ice Shelf.
Oct 09 2014	Science / Ice and Snow Where Are They Now? One of the world's biggest break-up stories isn't in Hollywood. It's taking place around Antarctica. An iceberg that calved in March 2000 from the Ross Ice Shelf is continuing its slow disintegration in the Amery Sea, nearly halfway around the continent from where it started.
Sep 25 2014	Science / Ice and Snow Surface Melt Newly published research on the geologic history of the Antarctic Peninsula, specifically an area where a large, floating ice shelf disintegrated in the early 2000s, indicates that the cataclysmic break-up was primarily a result of rising air temperatures and melting at the ice surface.
Aug 22 2014	Science / Ice and Snow Roving Around A team with the Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling project deployed last year to continue an effort to understand the dynamics of the ice above a subglacial lake where researchers found life.
Jun 12 2014	Science / Ice and Snow Transformative Technology The Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets has helped transform glaciological research over the last decade. Its radar systems have been instrumental in recent research that has shown that glaciers in West Antarctica's Amundsen Sea Embayment have reached a tipping point.

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