Life In Warm Steamy Ice Caves Beneath Antarctica’s Glaciers

ice cave

The Antarctic is of course glaciated and very very cold, that is well understood. What is new is the realisation that it is not all a barren lifeless landscape, but instead contains niches where life has potentially gained a foothold in a rather surprising way. Hidden under the ice are Geothermal ice caverns. This is because Antarctic … Read more

Larsen C has finally split – It is one of the biggest icebergs ever recorded – #antarctic

Last December I was writing about the widening rift that had been measured in the Larsen C Ice Shelf in the Antarctic by NASA’s #ICEBridge. I highlighted the inevitable – the breakup of the Larsen C ice shelf,  and pointed out that this was part of the on-going process that had seen Larsen A disintegrate in … Read more

Antarctic: Irreversible ocean warming threatens the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf

Hartmut Hellmer, Frank Kauker, Ralph Timmermann, and Tore Hattermann Alfred of the Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany, have published a new paper that focuses on the potential collapse of an Antarctic ice shelf. It is entitled “The Fate of the Southern Weddell Sea Continental Shelf in a Warming Climate”, … Read more

Antarctic Dispatches from reporters who went to see and film

The New York Times sent a team of four journalists and videographers to go with a Columbia University team to Antarctica late last year. They not only flew across the world’s largest chunk of floating ice in an American military cargo plane loaded with the latest scientific gear, but could also intermingle with the scientists for long periods of time, and so … Read more

Antarctic Surface Melt is rather widespread

A new study reveals a rather extensive system of meltwater is flowing within the Antarctic. Entitled “Widespread movement of meltwater onto and across Antarctic ice shelves“, it was published in Nature a couple of days ago. The title is not simply a hint, but describes exactly what this study reveals. Up until now the very existence … Read more

US Rep Gary Palmer: “Sea Ice is expanding”, is this true? #climate

US Rep Gary Palmer, a Republican who was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 2014 and represents Alabama’s 6th congressional district, recently held a town hall meeting in which he got into a back and forth argument about climate change … He made the statement during a testy back and forth with one attendee about climate change, after … Read more