11 December, 2025 by Kate Hendry
Far from being frozen and sterile environments, glaciers are biogeochemical reactors and regulators. In this Review, we discuss the hydrology and biogeochemistry of glacierized environments and their impact on downstream…Read more on Glacier biogeochemical cycling and downstream impacts
8 December, 2025 by Thomas Bracegirdle
The Amundsen Sea is dominated by a quasi-stationary low-pressure region, the Amundsen Sea Low (ASL). ASL variability impacts on regional weather and the basal melting of ice shelves, an important…8 December, 2025 by Alistair Monteath
Radiocarbon-dated fossils indicate woolly mammoths were extirpated from mainland Beringia around 13 000 years ago. However, environmental DNA in permafrost suggests small “cryptic“ populations survived into the Holocene. Resolving this discrepancy…Read more on Adopted “mammoths” from Alaska turn out to be a whale’s tale
8 December, 2025 by Huw Griffiths, Rowan Whittle, Tasnuva Khan
Seymour (Marambio) Island, Antarctica has one of the most expanded onshore Cretaceous–Paleogene sedimentary successions in the world. The deposition of the López de Bertodano Formation (~70–65.6 Ma) covered a time of…4 December, 2025 by John King, Maria Vittoria Guarino, Steve Colwell
Surface warming in the polar regions has important consequences for the stability of the lowest layers of the atmosphere and for atmospheric vertical movement. Here, using ERA5 reanalysis data and…Read more on A long-term shift in flow regimes over the Antarctic Peninsula
3 December, 2025 by Lloyd Peck
We present outcomes from our 17th horizon scan of issues potentially impacting global biodiversity conservation in the next decade. Issues are novel, or represent a significant step-change in impact, and…Read more on A horizon scan of biological conservation issues for 2026
1 December, 2025 by Kevin Hughes
Biological invasions are one of the major drivers of biodiversity decline and have been shown to have far‐reaching consequences for society and the economy. Preventing the introduction and spread of…1 December, 2025 by Jose Marques Queiros, Jose Dos Santos Abreu, Richard Phillips
The giant warty squid Moroteuthopsis longimana is an important prey of top predators in the Southern Ocean. It is therefore a major link in the pathway of contaminants like mercury…1 December, 2025 by Alistair Monteath
Cryptotephra (non-visible volcanic ash) deposits in the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) provide a distal record of South American volcanism and ash dispersal into the South Atlantic Ocean. Here, we present…1 December, 2025 by Sophie Fielding
Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) are among the most abundant species on our planet and serve as a vital food source for many marine predators in the Southern Ocean. In this…1 December, 2025 by Katrin Linse
Amathillopsis spinigera Heller, 1875, is an enigmatic peracarid crustacean species found in the Arctic Ocean. During the summer of 2024, it was recorded in the HAUSGARTEN observatory for the first…1 December, 2025 by Alex Brisbourne, Carlos Martin Garcia
Dielectric anisotropy in ice alters the propagation of polarized radio waves, so polarimetric radar sounding can be used to survey anisotropic properties of ice masses. Ice anisotropy is either intrinsic,…1 December, 2025 by Jasmine Lee, Kevin Hughes, Richard Phillips
Tourism in Antarctica is increasing rapidly and is concentrated predominantly in ice-free areas in the Antarctic Peninsula region, an area that holds globally important colonies of breeding birds. Since 2005,…1 December, 2025
Understanding how deleterious mutations affect fitness is central to evolutionary and conservation biology. However, most empirical studies rely on inbreeding as a proxy for the mutation load, overlooking the substantial…Read more on Early-life viability selection targets deleterious mutations in exons
1 December, 2025 by Lloyd Peck, Melody Clark
Amid 1. increasing anthropogenic pressures on ecosystems, standardised biodiversity monitoring is critical for assessing biodiversity change. Marine hard-bottom habitats, though ubiquitous and biodiverse, present challenges for biodiversity monitoring due to…1 December, 2025 by Ashley Bennison
Conserving marine species effectively requires spatially and temporally explicit knowledge of their abundance and distribution for assessing potential impacts (e.g., from fishery bycatch, anthropogenic sound, ship strikes) over different spatial…1 December, 2025 by Alistair Monteath, Emma Young, Stephen Roberts, Tom Jordan, Teal Riley
Pumice rafts derived from submarine eruptions can remain afloat for months or even years, traveling thousands of kilometers on ocean currents. These natural phenomena disperse marine organisms and provide important…28 November, 2025
As sea ice retreats in a warming climate, the Arctic Ocean is becoming more energetic; yet little is known about this additional energy's distribution in the water column. We use…28 November, 2025 by Peter Convey
Microorganisms often occur in association with macroalgae, with the term “phycosphere” referring to the seaweed surface where they may be present. Phycosphere represents a poorly explored niche of marine diversity,…27 November, 2025 by Teal Riley
South Georgia forms one of the most isolated fragments of continental crust on Earth and lies in a remote location in the Southern Ocean. Its geology is dominated by Early…27 November, 2025 by Caroline Holmes
Antarctic sea ice showed a profound, step-wise reduction around 2016-2017, but the scarcity of modern time series means that we know very little about how Southern Ocean biota have responded.…26 November, 2025 by Dominic Hodgson
Understanding past variability in Antarctic sea ice is of critical importance to determine how it regulates global climate processes, biogeochemistry, and Southern Ocean marine ecosystems. Records of changes in Holocene…26 November, 2025 by Thomas Lachlan-Cope
Over the Southern Ocean, atmospheric and climate models have large biases in their radiative fluxes, primarily caused by the representation of supercooled liquid and mixed-phase low-level clouds, both at the…26 November, 2025 by Marie Attard
The surface texture of bird eggshells differs remarkably between species and is thought to play a substantial role in providing physical and microbial protection for the developing embryo. We used…24 November, 2025
As top predators, leopard seals (Hydrurga leptonyx) have a key role in Southern Ocean ecosystems. For example, this species has driven the local collapse of Antarctic fur seals (Arctocephalus gazella)…Read more on Genomic analyses reveal trans-generational haul out site fidelity in leopard seals
23 November, 2025 by Peter Convey
Diversity, distribution and biogeographical aspects of polar macroalgae must be reassessed as they face contemporary environmental changes. Macroalgae are the basis of the marine food web, efficient carbon sinks, biogenic…21 November, 2025 by Kaine Bunting, Mark Clilverd, Nigel Meredith, Thomas Daggitt
Relativistic electrons are an important space weather hazard, being a major source of radiation damage to satellites and posing a risk to humans in space. We use approximately 20 years…20 November, 2025 by Richard Phillips
Background: Pelagic seabirds forage over vast areas, and their movements and diet provide valuable insights into environmental conditions that are otherwise difficult to observe. Snow petrels Pagodroma nivea forage largely…18 November, 2025 by Hamish Pritchard
The Tibetan Plateau is a high-altitude arid region, where limited in-situ precipitation measurements are available. In this communication, we document a strong precipitation gradient at the southern edge of the…16 November, 2025 by Hua Lu, John King, Thomas Caton Harrison, Thomas Bracegirdle
Near-surface marine winds in coastal Antarctica have global importance, as they affect ocean circulation and sea-ice variability. We test the sensitivities of simulated near-surface winds and wind stress in coastal…15 November, 2025 by Alistair Monteath
Eastern Beringia (Alaska and western Yukon) is an extensive, high-latitude region of North America that remained largely unglaciated throughout the Quaternary. Consequently, its sedimentary deposits preserve long-term environmental records that…15 November, 2025 by Peter Convey
Plastic pollution has reached the remote terrestrial ecosystems of Antarctica, but the extent to which microplastics are affecting native terrestrial invertebrates has not been assessed. Using Antarctica's only endemic insect,…14 November, 2025 by Philip Trathan
Marine megafauna species are affected by a wide range of anthropogenic threats. To evaluate the risk of such threats, species’ vulnerability to each threat must first be determined. We build…Read more on Vulnerability of marine megafauna to global at‐sea anthropogenic threats
13 November, 2025 by Connor Bamford, Jamie Coleman, John Dickens, Nathan Fenney, Philip Hollyman, Peter Fretwell, John Dickens
The emergence of highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses (HPAIV) has caused widespread mortality wildlife globally. In 2023, mass mortalities of southern elephant seals Mirounga leonina were observed in South America,…12 November, 2025 by Josephine Anselin
Ocean-driven melting of floating ice shelves is currently the main process controlling Antarctica’s contribution to sea level rise. However, despite major advances in the study of ice shelf-ocean interaction over…Read more on Ocean mixing and heat transport beneath Antarctic ice shelves
12 November, 2025 by Peter Convey
The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) adopted a work program (2019–2030) that included, under its first objective, the interlinkages between biodiversity and climate change (IPBES, 2019).…Read more on Editorial: Biodiversity of Antarctic and Subantarctic ecosystems
7 November, 2025 by Michael Haigh
Coupled with the Antarctic Slope Front (ASF), the Antarctic Slope Current (ASC) mostly encircles Antarctica and has variable structures. Two regimes of the ASC/ASF have been identified in the Ross…7 November, 2025 by Paul Holland
Anomalous freshwater fluxes from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and ice shelves are impacting the surrounding oceans, and we need to be able to account for these effects in…5 November, 2025 by Peter Convey
Dryas octopetala is one of the most important botanical components of Arctic tundra. In parts of the Norwegian High Arctic Archipelago of Svalbard it can face strong grazing pressure, in…5 November, 2025 by Carlos Martin Garcia
Numerical age models are useful tools for investigating the age of the ice in an ice sheet. They can be used to date ice cores or to interpret isochronal horizons…3 November, 2025 by Alison McLaren, Louise Sime, Qinggang Gao
There is an increasing need to understand how water is cycled and transported within the atmosphere, to aid water management. Here, atmospheric water tracers are added to the Met Office…Read more on Implementation of water tracers in the Met Office Unified Model
3 November, 2025 by James Kirkham
This policy brief summarizes for policymakers the extensive assessment contained in the peer-reviewed paper Siegert et al., 2025 “Safeguarding the polar regions from dangerous geoengineering: a critical assessment of proposed…Read more on Policy Brief: Safeguarding the polar regions from dangerous geoengineering
1 November, 2025 by Alison Cleary
Understanding diet composition is essential for unravelling trophic interactions in aquatic ecosystems. DNA metabarcoding, utilising various variable regions of the 18S rRNA gene, is increasingly employed to investigate zooplankton diet…1 November, 2025 by Peter Convey
Globalization has increased human movement, transforming ecosystems and introducing non-native species that threaten biodiversity, particularly in Antarctica. Due to its harsh climatic conditions, Antarctica has largely remained protected from biological…1 November, 2025 by Richard Horne
On 15 February 2018 a co-rotating interaction region (CIR) from an equatorial coronal hole reached the Earth. The CIR initiated a moderate and slowly intensifying geomagnetic storm, which began with…31 October, 2025 by Emma Young, Joanna Zanker
Climate change is impacting high-latitude fjord circulation with consequences for the transport of marine biota essential for supporting local ecosystems. Currently, little is understood about oceanographic variability in sub-Antarctic island…30 October, 2025 by Philip Hollyman
Mercury (Hg) is a neurotoxic element that can harm marine wildlife. Hg can reach the Southern Ocean through atmospheric and oceanic currents. However, data on Hg in Southern Ocean deep-sea…28 October, 2025 by Tasnuva Khan
Modern day benthic community composition and distribution in the Southern Ocean are influenced by a variety of environmental and evolutionary factors across different spatial scales. Depth, temperature, salinity, and sea…28 October, 2025 by Peter Davis
Pine Island Bay (PIB), situated in the Amundsen Sea, is renowned for its retreating ice shelves and highly variable sea ice. While brine rejection from sea ice formation and glacial…28 October, 2025 by Caroline Holmes, Thomas Bracegirdle
Antarctic sea ice area exhibited an abrupt decline in 2015–2016, transitioning from a near record maximum state to a then-record minimum state. The underlying drivers are still being studied, raising…Read more on Extreme Antarctic Sea Ice Loss Facilitated by Negative Shift of Southern Annular Mode
28 October, 2025 by Xu Zhang
A critical gap in East Asian summer monsoon research is the lack of speleothem records from its northeasternmost fringe, hindering tests of orbital-scale monsoon variability at higher latitudes. Our new…28 October, 2025 by Gabriele Stowasser, Jose Marques Queiros, Jose Dos Santos Abreu, Martin Collins, Mark Belchier, Philip Hollyman
Understanding food-web structure is crucial to determine the functioning of ecosystems and sustainably manage resources. The Scotia Sea is an important area for Antarctic krill and toothfish fisheries, and one…28 October, 2025 by Christopher Auckland, Povl Abrahamsen, Keith Nicholls, Michael Meredith, Peter Davis, Pierre Dutrieux, Shenjie Zhou
Continuous moored time series of temperature, salinity, pressure and current speed and direction are of great importance for understanding the continental shelf and under-ice-shelf dynamics and thermodynamics that govern water…27 October, 2025 by Chester Sands
The phylum Echinodermata is a familiar constituent of almost every marine environment and a predominant portion of the fauna in some regions. As with most marine taxa, the clade is…24 October, 2025 by Clara Manno, Florence Atherden, Geraint Tarling, Peter Ward
The Southern Ocean is a globally significant site of carbon sequestration with the copepod community exerting a strong influence on the carbon flux. Currently, a holistic understanding of Southern Ocean…Read more on Seasonal analysis of Southern Ocean copepod ecology using a moored sediment trap
23 October, 2025 by Alex Brisbourne, Andy Smith, Rebecca Schlegel
Basal conditions that facilitate fast ice flow are still poorly understood and their parameterization in ice‐flow models results in high uncertainties in ice‐flow and consequent sea‐level rise projections. Direct observations…23 October, 2025 by Richard Phillips
Advancements in acoustic data collection technologies have greatly increased their use in wildlife monitoring, but produce large volumes of data that are challenging to analyse manually. Recent developments in machine…23 October, 2025
Plastic pollution in the ocean is a global environmental issue, with buoyant debris accumulating at the surface and posing long-term ecological threats. Although sediments are the ultimate sink for plastics,…23 October, 2025 by Peter Convey
We evaluated the diversity and biotechnological potential of culturable fungi from sediments of Florencia and Katerina lakes, James Ross Island, maritime Antarctica. A total of 57 fungal isolates, belonging to…22 October, 2025 by Joanne Johnson, Tom Jordan, Teal Riley
Subglacial geology plays a key role in determining the rate of ice flow and sensitivity of the glacial system to atmospheric or ocean warming. However, bedrock geology is often poorly…22 October, 2025 by Katie Lowery, Paul Holland, Pierre Dutrieux
Ice shelves buttress the grounded ice sheet, restraining its flow into the ocean. Mass loss from these ice shelves occurs primarily through ocean-induced basal melting, with the highest melt rates…21 October, 2025 by Ainsley Hatt, David Barnes, Lloyd Peck, Melody Clark
Predicting how benthic assemblages respond to ocean warming remains a central challenge in marine ecology. Artificial units of habitat such as settlement plates have long been used to study marine…21 October, 2025 by Ben Evans
Multimodal artificial intelligence (AI) integrates diverse types of data via machine learning to improve understanding, prediction and decision-making across disciplines such as healthcare, science and engineering. However, most multimodal AI…Read more on Towards deployment-centric multimodal AI beyond vision and language
20 October, 2025 by Alex Brisbourne, Alvaro Arenas Pingarron, Carlos Martin Garcia, Carl Robinson, Hugh Corr, Tom Jordan, Alvaro Pingarron Arenas
Ground-penetrating radar reveals subsurface geometry and ice stratigraphy that contains information about past and present dynamics of the cryosphere. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is a processing technique based on averaging…20 October, 2025 by Carlos Martin Garcia, Tom Jordan
Radio-echo sounding (RES) has revealed an internal architecture within both the West and East Antarctic ice sheets that records their depositional, deformational and melting histories. Crucially, RES-imaged internal-reflecting horizons, tied…19 October, 2025 by Kaitlin Naughten
The world's oceans and their biodiversity are undergoing change driven by climate change and anthropogenic impacts such as fishing. The Kerguelen Plateau is a biodiversity hotspot with many endemic fish…17 October, 2025 by Nigel Meredith, Sarah Glauert
The Combined Release and Radiation Effects Satellite (CRRES) observed the response of the Van Allen radiation belts to peak solar activity within solar cycle 22. This study analyses relativistic and…15 October, 2025 by Ingrid Cnossen
Climate change is inducing a global atmospheric contraction above the tropopause (~10 km), leading to systematic decrease in neutral air density. The impact of climate change on small meteoroids has…Read more on Century-scale effect of climate change on meteorite falls
15 October, 2025 by Richard Phillips
Light-based geolocation can be an effective tool for understanding movements and distributions of free-ranging seabirds, particularly during migrations and long-distance foraging trips. The light levels recorded by geolocators (global location…Read more on Quantifying the effect of time on geolocation accuracy in seabirds
15 October, 2025 by Dave Munday
The global ocean’s overturning circulation plays an important role in climate and climate variability through its transport of heat, freshwater and nutrients. As part of this three-dimensional overturning circulation, dense…Read more on Aspects of the Global Thermohaline Circulation in the Absence of Wind Forcing
14 October, 2025 by Thomas Bauska
Gypsum and marls from the 15 cycles of the Messinian Yesares Member in the Sorbas Basin, SE Spain, were analysed using a multi-isotope approach to reconstruct palaeo-hydrological conditions of the…14 October, 2025 by Oliver Marsh
The stability of the Antarctic Ice Sheet depends on ice flux into the ocean through major outlet glaciers, which is resisted by shear stresses in the lateral shear margins, both…13 October, 2025 by Alexandra Weiss
Coupled Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models have only recently been implemented for short-term environmental prediction and both challenges and benefits are evident in polar regions. Their simulation of surface exchange…Read more on Rapid Summertime Sea Ice Melt in a Coupled Numerical Weather Prediction System
13 October, 2025 by Alexander Brearley, Kate Hendry
The flux of nutrients from continents to the oceans sustains oceanic primary productivity and is a fundamental component of the carbon cycle. In most regions of the world's oceans primary…9 October, 2025 by Andrew Orr, Ella Gilbert, Siddharth Gumber, Tony Phillips
Antarctica's weather and climate have global impacts, influencing weather patterns, ocean currents and sea levels worldwide. However, Antarctica is vast and complex, and the atmospheric processes that govern its climate…9 October, 2025 by Peter Convey
Maritime Antarctica experiences less extreme environmental conditions than much of the Antarctic continent and has further been impacted by considerable warming in recent decades. While inventories exist of macroscopic Antarctic…8 October, 2025 by Irene Malmierca Vallet, Louise Sime, Rahul Sivankutty, Sentia Goursaud
The Last Interglacial (LIG) period, approximately 130 000 to 115 000 years ago, represents one of the warmest intervals of the past 800 000 years. Here, we simulate water isotopes in precipitation over…8 October, 2025 by Paul Holland, Yavor Kostov
The importance of Antarctic iceberg meltwater for the Southern Ocean has been a strong incentive to include Lagrangian icebergs in ocean and climate models. However, the modeled iceberg thickness has…Read more on Iceberg Grounding Enhances the Release of Freshwater on the Antarctic Continental Shelf
8 October, 2025
The seasonality of Arctic sea ice cover significantly influences heat, salt, buoyancy fluxes, ocean-ice stresses, and the potential and kinetic energy stored in the ocean mixed layer. This study examines…Read more on Variability of the Kinetic Energy in Seasonally Ice‐Covered Oceans
7 October, 2025 by David Pearce
Svalbard is host to a range of glacier types with different thermal regimes, behaviors and complex hydrological networks and landforms. Here, we hypothesize that the (H1) surge-type glaciers will host…Read more on Microbial Communities in Sediments From Different Landform Systems, Svalbard
7 October, 2025 by Xin Yang
Tropospheric ozone depletion events (ODEs) occurring in the Arctic spring are a unique photochemical phenomenon in which the boundary layer ozone drops rapidly to near-zero levels. However, the criterion for…6 October, 2025 by Oliver Marsh
Full-thickness ice shelf fractures, known as rifts, create tabular icebergs that can reduce ice shelf extent and thereby jeopardize overall marine ice sheet stability. Low confidence in the scientific understanding…6 October, 2025 by Claus-Dieter Hillenbrand, Xu Zhang
Between ~800 and 430 thousand years ago lukewarm interglacials were characterized by lower atmospheric CO2 levels and colder Antarctic temperatures than subsequent interglacials. The Southern Ocean is thought to have…Read more on Enhanced deep Southern Ocean stratification during the lukewarm interglacials
6 October, 2025 by Victoria Peck
The Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) exerts substantial control on the physical, chemical, and biological properties of the Southern Ocean, playing a key role in modulating the global carbon cycle and…4 October, 2025 by Jenny Wong, Nigel Meredith
Numerical models of energetic electron behavior in the outer radiation belt require descriptions of the wave‐particle interactions across the inner magnetosphere. Quasilinear diffusion coefficients describe gyro‐resonant wave‐particle interactions over large…Read more on Occurrence Rates and Variability of Whistler‐Mode Waves in the Plasma Trough
3 October, 2025 by Lloyd Peck, Richard Phillips
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are widespread environmental pollutants that can bioaccumulate in biota and cause a variety of adverse effects. Seabirds are useful bioindicators of pollutants in marine food…2 October, 2025 by Gaelle Veyssiere, Jeremy Wilkinson
The recent alignment of CryoSat-2 to maximise orbital coincidence with the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) over the Southern Ocean and Antarctica in July 2022, known as the…2 October, 2025 by Gaelle Veyssiere, Jeremy Wilkinson
For the first time, a comparison of altimetry-derived snow depth estimates between dual-frequency spaceborne and near-coincident multi-frequency airborne estimates is conducted using data from the recent under-flight of a CryoSat-2…1 October, 2025 by Robert Mulvaney
The Beyond EPICA Oldest Ice project is a European project that aims to retrieve a continuous ice core up to 1.5 Ma through deep drilling at Little Dome C (LDC), Antarctica.…Read more on Age, thinning and spatial origin of the Beyond EPICA ice from a 2.5D ice flow model
1 October, 2025 by Peter Convey
Additives such as stabilizers, plasticizers, and fillers are commonly used in relatively small amounts to enhance the structure of plastics. Notably, some of these additives, including moieties of compounds containing…1 October, 2025 by Andrew Orr
We show that low-level jets (LLJs) occurred in 11 out of 22 radiosonde profiles in late austral summer over the coastal region of the Amundsen Sea Embayment, with ten of…1 October, 2025 by Aanchal Jain, Clara Manno, Kevin Hughes
Microplastic release in Antarctica is an issue of increasing concern, despite the limited human presence in the region. This study estimates the annual release of microplastics from the wastewaters of…1 October, 2025 by Michael Meredith
Sea ice in the Southern Ocean substantially modifies atmosphere–ice–ocean fluxes of energy, freshwater, carbon, nutrients, and other important properties. It redistributes these quantities in space and time, modifies water masses…1 October, 2025 by Alexandra Weiss, Markus Frey, Romy Hall, Thomas Bracegirdle, Xin Yang
Polar Winter Climate and Processes: Towards Filling Knowledge Gaps in the Understanding of the Coupled Climate System Recordings: Over 110 participants registered for this hybrid workshop, from 18 countries representing…Read more on Why Polar Winter Climate and Processes? [Meeting Report]
1 October, 2025 by Alex Brisbourne, Ronan Agnew
Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica has been identified as a route to destabilization of the whole West Antarctic Ice Sheet, potentially leading to several meters of sea‐level rise. However, future…1 October, 2025 by Michael Meredith
Changes in the hydrological cycle can affect ocean circulation and ventilation. Freshwater enters the ocean as meteoric water (MW; precipitation, river runoff, and glacial discharge) and sea ice meltwater (SIM).…