Apr
20
2017
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Ancient Ice Levels
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.
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Sep
27
2016
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Capturing a Collapse
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
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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.
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Apr
12
2016
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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.
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Feb
24
2016
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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.
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Jun
08
2015
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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.
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Mar
26
2015
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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.
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Mar
13
2015
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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.
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Jan
09
2015
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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.
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Nov
27
2014
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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.
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Oct
23
2014
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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.
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Oct
09
2014
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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.
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Sep
25
2014
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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.
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Circumnavigating the Pole Hole
Dating The East Antarctic Ice Sheet
