Found 13594 items
4 March, 2025 by Kate Hendry
Subglacial weathering releases biologically important nutrients into meltwaters that have the potential to influence downstream ecosystems. There is a need to understand how accelerated glacial retreat could impact biogeochemical cycling…Read more on High-Resolution Sensors Reveal Nitrate and Dissolved Silica Dynamics in an Arctic Fjord
3 March, 2025 by Aaron Hendry, Mark Clilverd
Previously the geomagnetic Ap index has been used as a proxy to produce empirical energetic electron precipitation (EEP) forcing representations suitable for incorporation into coupled-climate model runs. The long-running Ap…1 March, 2025 by Alistair Crame, Jane Francis
The Cretaceous period is particularly well represented by a thick sequence of clastic sedimentary rocks exposed in the Antarctic Peninsula region of western Antarctica. This was an active margin throughout…Read more on Cretaceous stratigraphy of Antarctica and its global significance
28 February, 2025 by Neil Brough
Water-insoluble organic material extracted from atmospheric aerosol samples collected in urban (Royal Holloway, University of London, UK) and remote (Halley Research Station, Antarctica) locations were shown to form stable thin…28 February, 2025 by Andrew Orr, Ruth Price
The Southern Ocean and offshore coastal Antarctica are key regions for global climate. Low level mixed-phase clouds strongly control the surface radiation budget of this region but remain challenging for…28 February, 2025 by Ingrid Cnossen
Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions significantly impact the middle and upper atmosphere. They cause cooling and thermal shrinking and affect the atmospheric structure. Atmospheric contraction results in changes in key atmospheric…Read more on The Need for Better Monitoring of Climate Change in the Middle and Upper Atmosphere
28 February, 2025 by Bianca Perren, Dominic Hodgson
Recent intensification of the Southern Hemisphere Westerlies has resulted in important changes to ocean circulation, Antarctic ice shelf stability and precipitation regimes in the continents abutting the Southern Ocean. Efforts…27 February, 2025 by Norman Ratcliffe, Ryan Saunders
The porbeagle shark Lamna nasus, a top predator in the North Atlantic, is vulnerable to anthropogenic stressors due to its life history characteristics. Understanding its biology, abundance and spatial ecology…Read more on Migration and space use by porbeagle sharks Lamna nasus in the northeast Atlantic
26 February, 2025 by Xu Zhang
The rainfall patterns in Eastern Asia are largely a consequence of the Asian winter and summer monsoons. On timescales 10 4 –10 6 of years, the position and strength of…25 February, 2025 by Clara Manno, Claire Waluda, Emily Rowlands, Kirstie Jones-Williams
Microplastic pollution in remote inland Antarctica is largely unknown. This study explored the plastic footprint of snow from remote Antarctic camps: Union Glacier, Schanz Glacier and the South Pole. Refined…Read more on Microplastics in Antarctica – a Plastic Legacy in the Antarctic Snow?
25 February, 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 [EGUsphere preprint]
25 February, 2025 by Dominic Hodgson
Understanding past variability in Antarctic sea ice is of critical importance to determine how it regulates global climate processes and biogeochemistry, and Southern Ocean marine ecosystems. Records of changes in…24 February, 2025 by Peter Convey
Polar ecosystems are threatened by non-native plants, and this risk will increase with climate warming. Non-native plant growth depends on Antarctic environmental conditions and substrates, but these influences are poorly…21 February, 2025 by Oliver Marsh
We present a 1000 km transect of phase-sensitive radar measurements of ice thickness, basal reflection strength, basal melting, and ice-column deformation across the Ross Ice Shelf (RIS). Measurements were gathered…19 February, 2025 by Lloyd Peck, Nicholas Barrett
Coastal freshening in the Southern Ocean is expected to increase under projected climate scenarios. As a major environmental stressor, prolonged reduced salinity could pose a significant challenge to Antarctica's endemic…19 February, 2025 by Martin Collins
We present a genome assembly from an individual female Electrona antarctica (the Antarctic lanternfish; Chordata; Actinopterigii; Myctophiformes; Myctophidae). The genome sequence has a total length of 1,427.40 megabases. Most of…19 February, 2025 by Markus Frey
Aerosols play a critical role in the Arctic's radiative balance, influencing solar radiation and cloud formation. Limited observations in the central Arctic leave gaps in understanding aerosol dynamics year-round, affecting…16 February, 2025 by Richard Phillips
Aim: To identify the broad‐scale oceanic migration routes (‘marine flyways’) used by multiple pelagic, long‐distance migratory seabirds based on a global compilation of tracking data. Location: Global. Time Period: 1989–2023.…12 February, 2025 by Andrew Kavanagh, Jade Reidy, Jade Reidy
The mesosphere/lower-thermosphere/ionosphere (MLTI) region is a critical boundary in the coupling of the atmosphere, climate and space weather, however it is one of the least understood regions, making it hard…12 February, 2025 by Peter Convey
The Antarctic midge, Belgica antarctica, is a unique insect endemic to Antarctica. It has a 2-year life cycle, with larvae overwintering in two different instars and adults emerging the following…11 February, 2025
Ice cores provide an un-matched high-resolution archive into paleoclimate reconstruction that other environmental archives (e.g. coral, sediment cores, and tree rings) do not. Limited research has focussed on terrestrial organic…11 February, 2025 by Andrew Orr, Ella Gilbert
We explore how atmospheric rivers (ARs) in a summer and winter case interact with the topography of the Amundsen Sea Embayment, West Antarctica, and deposit significant precipitation amounts. To do…11 February, 2025 by Gareth Marshall
Utilising the 20th Century Reanalysis version 3 (20CRv3), we examine changes in the extent and rate of autumn Eurasian snow cover (SC) advance and the temporal variability in the SC–Arctic…10 February, 2025
Cephalopods are crucial to the Southern Ocean ecosystem, connecting top predators with mid-trophic organisms, yet their ecology in the Pacific sector is not well understood. This research used stable isotope…Read more on Evidence of eastern rockhopper penguin feeding on a key commercial arrow squid species
10 February, 2025 by Andrew Orr
Since the late 1990s, summer surface melt across ice shelves in the Ross-Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica increased significantly, as demonstrated by satellite measurements and MetUM simulations. This contrasts…8 February, 2025 by Michael Meredith
Background: The west Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) is a region of rapid environmental changes, with regional differences in climate warming along the north–south axis of the peninsula. Along the WAP, Palmer…7 February, 2025 by Louise Sime, Qinggang Gao, Rahul Sivankutty, Xu Zhang
Given relatively abundant paleo-proxies, the study of the last interglacial (LIG, ∼ 129–116 000 years ago, ka) is valuable to understanding the responses and feedback of the Southern Ocean and Antarctica in…7 February, 2025 by Philip Leat
Mechanisms regulating material transfer from subducted slabs to arc magmas remain debated, centered on metasomatized mantle wedge interactions versus mélange mobilization at the slab-mantle interface. The South Sandiwch Islands arc…Read more on Mélange dehydration and melting beneath South Sandwich Islands arc
6 February, 2025 by Patrick Keith
The Southern Ocean is experiencing major environmental and ecological changes which could drastically alter communities and impact ecosystem functioning. We still have a poor understanding of the structure of Southern…Read more on Drivers of Southern Ocean food web structure and impacts of environmental change
6 February, 2025 by Huw Griffiths, Kevin Hughes, Lloyd Peck, Peter Convey
Antarctica harbors many distinctive features of life, yet much about the diversity and functioning of Antarctica’s life remains unknown. Evolutionary histories and functional ecology are well understood only for vertebrates,…5 February, 2025 by Rebecca Peel
This thesis details the development and application of a pyrolysis-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (Py-GC/MS) method for the quantification of microplastic pollution in terrestrial samples. Initial analysis of plastic standards using Py-GC/MS…5 February, 2025
Many studies have reported the paradoxical observation of high concentrations of low‐density microplastics (plastic particles < 5 mm) in deep‐sea sediments despite their buoyancy. The incorporation of buoyant microplastics into…5 February, 2025 by Hua Lu
Significant changes have occurred during the last few decades across the North Atlantic climate system, including in the atmosphere, ocean, and cryosphere. These large-scale changes play a vital role in…4 February, 2025 by David Pearce
In this review, we delineate the unique set of characteristics associated with cryosphere environments (namely, ice and permafrost) which present both challenges and opportunities for studying ancient environmental microbiomes (AEMs).…Read more on Ancient environmental microbiomes and the cryosphere
4 February, 2025 by Lloyd Peck
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an emerging tool that could be leveraged to identify the effective conservation solutions demanded by the urgent biodiversity crisis. We present the results of our horizon…Read more on The potential for AI to revolutionize conservation: a horizon scan
4 February, 2025 by Emma Boland
Climate models are increasingly used to derive localised, specific information to guide adaptation to climate change. Model projections of future scenarios are conferred credibility by evaluating model skill in reproducing…4 February, 2025 by Ananth Ranjithkumar, Markus Frey, Thomas Lachlan-Cope, Xin Yang
In the polar regions, there is significant model bias in the number concentrations and seasonality of sea salt aerosol (SSA) due to the lack of understanding of aerosol sources associated…3 February, 2025 by James Smith, Keith Makinson, Keith Nicholls, Paul Anker, Peter Davis
Thwaites Glacier is one of the fastest-changing ice-ocean systems in Antarctica. Basal melting beneath Thwaites' floating ice shelf, especially around pinning points and at the grounding line, sets the rate…Read more on Lateral Fluxes Drive Basal Melting Beneath Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf, West Antarctica
2 February, 2025 by Peter Convey
In this study, we evaluated the pathogenic potential of the fungi Aspergillus thermomutatus and Rhodotorula mucilaginosa obtained from maritime Antarctic permafrost using in vivo experiments on immunocompromised BALB/c mice. Despite…1 February, 2025 by Anne-Sophie Bonnet-Lebrun, Norman Ratcliffe
Aim: Ecologically similar species living in sympatry are expected to segregate to reduce the effects of competition where re-sources are limiting. Segregation from heterospecifics commonly occurs in space, but it…1 February, 2025 by Peter Convey
During a 2019 Chilean Antarctic Scientific Expedition (ECA 55) studying crustose coralline algae (CCA) diversity on the Antarctic Peninsula, bleaching of these algae was observed for the first time in…1 February, 2025 by Richard Phillips
Incidental mortality (bycatch) of seabirds in pelagic longline fisheries remains a major threat to many populations. The design and implementation of technical innovations aimed at reducing seabird bycatch rates have…1 February, 2025 by Jennifer Freer, Philip Trathan, Sophie Fielding, Victoria Warwick-Evans
The management strategy for the Antarctic krill ( Euphausia superba ) fishery is being revised. A key aim is to spatially and temporally allocate catches in a manner that minimizes…31 January, 2025 by Danielle Buss, Jaume Forcada, Richard Phillips, William Mills
Annual variation in prey availability can influence seabird diets and hence their exposure to pollutants, including mercury (Hg). Among seabirds, those species that scavenge carrion of marine mammals and other…29 January, 2025 by Philip Trathan
Biodiversity is critical for maintaining ecosystem function but is threatened by increasing anthropogenic pressures. In the Southern Ocean, a highly biologically productive region containing many endemic species, proactive management is…29 January, 2025 by Isobel Rowell, Jack Humby, Louise Sime, Robert Mulvaney
The fate of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is the largest cause of uncertainty in long-term sea-level projections. In the last interglacial (LIG) around 125,000 years ago, data suggest…Read more on The Ronne Ice Shelf survived the last interglacial
29 January, 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 in the past 800,000 years. Here we simulate water isotopes in precipitation in…28 January, 2025 by Megan Malpas
Stable boundary layers (SBLs) commonly form during the Arctic polar night, but their correct representation poses a major challenge for numerical weather prediction (NWP) systems. To enable detailed model verification,…28 January, 2025 by Anna Jones, Floortje Van Den Heuvel, Markus Frey, Thomas Lachlan-Cope
In order to reduce the uncertainty of aerosol radiative forcing in global climate models, we need to better understand natural aerosol sources which are important to constrain the current and…28 January, 2025 by Rosie Williams, James Byrne, Scott Hosking, Robert Arthern
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is losing ice and its annual contribution to sea level is increasing. The future behaviour of WAIS will impact societies worldwide, yet deep uncertainty…27 January, 2025 by Jasmine Lee, Peter Convey
Antarctica is one of Earth's most untouched, inhospitable, and poorly known regions. Although knowledge of its biodiversity has increased over recent decades, a diverse, wide-ranging, and spatially explicit compilation of…Read more on The biodiversity of ice-free Antarctica database [Data paper]
26 January, 2025 by Qinggang Gao
Precessional forcing is a key driver of quaternary climate change. Based on 24 experiments covering a full precession cycle, this study explores spatio-temporal variations of both climate and isotope signals…Read more on Precession Controls on Climate and Water Isotope Signals in Northern Africa
24 January, 2025 by Joanne Johnson
Unambiguous identification of past episodes of ice sheet thinning below the modern surface and grounding line retreat inboard of present requires recovery and exposure dating of subglacial bedrock. Such efforts…22 January, 2025 by Lloyd Peck
Just and fair transitions to low-carbon and nature-positive ways of living need to occur fast enough to limit and reverse the climate and nature crises, but not so fast that…22 January, 2025 by Dani Jones
Submesoscale eddies are important features in the upper ocean where they mediate air-sea exchanges, convey heat and tracer fluxes into ocean interior, and enhance biological production. However, due to their…22 January, 2025 by Jose Marques Queiros, Mark Belchier, Philip Hollyman
Food-webs are a major component of ecosystems and determinant for their functioning and structure. The food chain length (FCL) is a key feature of food-webs and it is crucial for…22 January, 2025 by Cameron Trotter, Huw Griffiths, Rowan Whittle
The analysis of image data for benthic biodiversity monitoring is now commonplace within the domain of marine ecology. Whilst advances in imaging technologies have allowed for the collection of vast…Read more on Surveying the deep: A review of computer vision in the benthos
22 January, 2025 by Dominic Hodgson, Kevin Hughes, Peter Convey
Antarctica, Earth’s least understood and most remote continent, is threatened by human disturbances and climate-related changes, underscoring the imperative for biodiversity inventories to inform conservation. Antarctic ecosystems support unique species…21 January, 2025 by Alistair Monteath
Anthropogenic climate warming is degrading permafrost across Interior Alaska. Information from past warming events provides long-term perspectives of future trajectories, however, late Quaternary seasonal temperatures are poorly constrained. We established…20 January, 2025 by Kevin Hughes, Kudzai Hwengwere, Lloyd Peck, Melody Clark
Despite being recognised as a global problem, our understanding of human-mediated antimicrobial resistance (AMR) spread to remote regions of the world is limited. Antarctica, often referred to as “the last…20 January, 2025 by Peter Convey
Invertebrates are ubiquitous. Diverse in form and function, they play crucial roles in ecosystems: for example as food for other organisms, as pollinators, and as decomposers. Invertebrate species vastly outnumber…17 January, 2025 by Freya Squires
The North Atlantic Climate System Integrated Study (ACSIS) was a large multidisciplinary research programme funded by the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). ACSIS ran from 2016 to 2022 and…17 January, 2025 by Jonathan Adams, Joanne Johnson, Stephen Roberts
Cosmogenic nuclide exposure dating is an important technique for reconstructing glacial histories. Many of the most commonly applied cosmogenic nuclides are extracted from the mineral quartz, meaning sampling of felsic…16 January, 2025 by Louise Sime
Antarctic ice cores can help determine ice mass loss from the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) during past warm periods. We compile Last Interglacial (LIG) δ18O measurements from eight Antarctic cores…16 January, 2025 by Jeremy Wilkinson
Frequency-domain electromagnetic induction (EMI) is routinely used to detect the presence of seawater due to the inherent electrical conductivity of the seawater. This approach is used to infer sea-ice thickness…16 January, 2025 by Andrew McDonald, Scott Hosking
In this paper, we explore the crucial role and challenges of computational reproducibility in geosciences, drawing insights from the Climate Informatics Reproducibility Challenge (CICR) in 2023. The competition aimed at…16 January, 2025 by Peter Davis, Robert Larter
Executive Summary: Change to Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica, sometimes referred to as the “Doomsday Glacier”, over the coming decades and centuries will have profound implications for global sea-level rise…15 January, 2025 by Mark Clilverd
Subionospheric very low-frequency (VLF) radio signals are reflected by free electrons in the ionospheric D-region at about 60–90 km altitude and can propagate over long distances, which makes them useful for…Read more on Investigation of the October effect in very low-frequency (VLF) signals
13 January, 2025 by Peter Convey
Polar marine macroalgae thrive in extreme conditions, often displaying geographic isolation and high degree of endemism. The “phycosphere” refers to the zone around the algae inhabited by microrganisms. Our study…10 January, 2025 by Peter Convey
Lichens play important roles in habitat formation and community succession in polar and alpine ecosystems. Despite their significance, the ecological effects of lichen traits remain poorly researched. We propose a…8 January, 2025 by Lorena Romero Martinez
Diatom resting stages can remain viable in sediments for decades and germinate when exposed to suitable environmental conditions, inoculating the water column and the surface sediments with new populations of…8 January, 2025 by David Barnes
Microplastics, small pieces of plastic measuring less than five millimeters, have spread to all ecosystems, even those in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica. In particular, microplastics have been found contaminating…Read more on Quantifying microplastics concentration of invertebrates from three Antarctic fjords
7 January, 2025 by Alistair Monteath
The number of cryptotephra (non-visible volcanic ash) records from northeastern North America is unique in the continent. The resulting tephrostratigraphic framework includes ash deposits sourced from volcanic arcs across the…7 January, 2025 by Andrew Orr
In this study, we investigate the complex relationship between western disturbances (WDs), the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), and extreme precipitation events (EPEs) in the western Himalaya (WH) during the extended…6 January, 2025 by Katrin Linse
Understanding how ecological, environmental and geographic features influence population genetic patterns provides crucial insights into a species' evolutionary history, as well as their vulnerability or resilience under climate change. In…3 January, 2025 by Dominic Hodgson, James Smith, Joanne Johnson, Teal Riley
The Hudson Mountains are situated in the eastern Amundsen Sea sector of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, adjacent to Pine Island Glacier. They form a volcanic field of 17 stratovolcanoes…Read more on Glacial geology of the Hudson Mountains, Amundsen Sea sector, West Antarctica
2 January, 2025 by Thomas Bauska
Understanding the causes of past atmospheric methane (CH4) variability is important for characterizing the relationship between CH4, global climate and terrestrial biogeochemical cycling. Ice core records of atmospheric CH4 contain…Read more on Abrupt changes in biomass burning during the last glacial period
2 January, 2025 by Xu Zhang
Permafrost is a potentially important source of deglacial carbon release alongside deep-sea carbon outgassing. However, limited proxies have restricted our understanding in circumarctic regions and the last deglaciation. Tibetan Plateau…2 January, 2025 by Dave Munday, Dani Jones, Rachel Furner
Machine learning (ML) techniques have emerged as a powerful tool for predicting weather and climate systems. However, much of the progress to date focuses on predicting the short-term evolution of…Read more on The challenge of land in a neural network ocean model
2 January, 2025 by Raghul Parthipan
Atmospheric models used for weather and climate prediction are traditionally formulated in a deterministic manner. In other words, given a particular state of the resolved scale variables, the most likely…Read more on Machine learning for stochastic parametrization
1 January, 2025 by Thomas Bauska
Beneath the surface of Antarctica lies a near perfect record of changes in the atmosphere composition over hundreds of thousands of years. This unique archive allows us to reconstruct atmospheric…1 January, 2025 by James Smith, Kelly Hogan
During Quaternary glaciations, ice sheets expanded from continental interiors across continental shelves and delivered large volumes of sediment, transported by meltwater, and icebergs to the marine environment. Glaciomarine sediments preserve…1 January, 2025 by Claire Allen, Dieter Tetzner
Here, we summarize the diatom research topics and applications that have the broadest relevance and importance for Antarctic studies. From the Southern Ocean we focus on biogeography, sea surface temperature…1 January, 2025 by Andrew Wood, Richard Phillips, Victoria Warwick-Evans
The Antarctic seasonal sea-ice zone (SIZ) is one of the most extensive and dynamic habitats on Earth. In summer, increased insolation and ice melt cause primary production to peak, sustaining…1 January, 2025 by Gareth Marshall
The Southern Annular Mode (SAM) is an important pattern of Southern Hemisphere circulation variability: it accounts for between 15 and 30 or more percent of the total variability of the…1 January, 2025 by Clara Manno
Monitoring the movement of plastic into marine food webs is central to understanding and mitigating the plastic pollution crisis. Bioindicators have been a component of the environmental monitoring toolkit for…1 January, 2025 by Rebecca Peel, Stephen Roberts
Microplastic pollution is a growing environmental problem. Consequently, an emerging area of research is the analysis of these micro-particles, to identify the distribution and impacts of plastic in the environment.…1 January, 2025 by Peter Convey
Increasing global morbidity is often associated with communicable or noncommunicable diseases; however, adverse drug effects have also been linked with an increase in mortality worldwide. This has emphasized the need…Read more on Chapter 36 – Biomedical applications of algal-based products
1 January, 2025 by Lloyd Peck
We discuss the outcomes of our 16th horizon scan of issues that are novel or represent a considerable step-change and have the potential to substantially affect conservation of biological diversity…Read more on A horizon scan of biological conservation issues for 2025
1 January, 2025 by David Pearce
Microorganisms have traditionally accelerated the study of ecology and evolution owing to their relatively short generation times and astronomical population sizes. Indeed, their potential in helping us to understand the…Read more on Crucial stepping stones in freshwater microbiology [News]
1 January, 2025 by David Pearce
Arctic biodiversity is under threat from both climate-induced environmental change and anthropogenic activity. However, the rapid rate of change and the challenging conditions for studying Arctic environments mean that many…1 January, 2025 by Carlos Martin Garcia
Ice rises hold valuable records revealing the ice dynamics and climatic history of Antarctic coastal areas from the Last Glacial Maximum to today. This history is often reconstructed from isochrone…Read more on Investigating the dynamic history of a promontory ice rise using radar data
1 January, 2025 by Scott Hosking
Machine learning models have been used extensively in hydrology, but issues persist with regard to their transparency, and there is currently no identifiable best practice for forcing variables in streamflow…Read more on Streamflow prediction using artificial neural networks and soil moisture proxies
31 December, 2024 by Timothy Jones
Behavioural plasticity is an important mechanism allowing animals to cope with changing environments. Theory has hypothesized the existence of ‘plasticity syndromes’—positive correlations in plasticity across multiple behaviours within an individual—affording…30 December, 2024 by Aidan Hunter, Arlie McCarthy, Clara Manno, Sally Thorpe
Marine microplastic is pervasive, polluting the remotest ecosystems including the Southern Ocean. Since this region is already undergoing climatic changes, the additional stress of microplastic pollution on the ecosystem should…28 December, 2024 by Elizabeth Collingwood, Gareth Marshall, Hua Lu, John King
Improvement of subseasonal to seasonal North Atlantic winter forecasting requires better prediction of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), the dominant mode of variability in the Northern Hemisphere. Despite recent research…Read more on Meridional wind in the upper stratosphere: A source of winter NAO predictability