The evolution and ecology of Antarctic sea floor communities
The evolution and ecology of Antarctic sea floor communities is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship, led by Dr Rowan Whittle, looking at the past, present and future of life at …
Understanding the role of the Polar Regions in climate change is a huge scientific challenge and an urgent priority for society. Our multidisciplinary climate research programmes investigate a wide range of science questions providing accurate information to politicians and policy makers.
The Antarctic is a pivotal part of the Earth’s climate system and a sensitive barometer of environmental change. Although remote and inhospitable, Antarctica is Earth’s most powerful natural laboratory. Understanding how the Antarctic is responding to current climate change – and what the continent was like in the past – is essential if scientists are to be able to more accurately predict future climate change and provide accurate information to politicians and policy makers.
British Antarctic Survey (BAS) has for the past 60 years been responsible for most of the UK’s scientific research in Antarctica and its current five-year research strategy is focussed on deepening our understanding of climate change.
Antarctic ice cores reveal the clearest link between levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the Earth’s temperature. They show that the temperature of the climate and the levels of greenhouse gases are intimately linked. In 2004, ice core scientists at BAS working together with colleagues from other European nations successfully extracted a three-kilometre ice core from the Antarctic. This core contains a record of the Earth’s climate stretching back 800,000 years – giving us by far the oldest continuous climate record yet obtained from ice cores.
BAS geologists can look back even further in time. By studying Antarctic rocks and sediments from the sea and lake beds, they are able to get a picture of what the Antarctic was like millions of years ago when the continent was warm and supported plants and animals such as dinosaurs. Understanding how the ice sheets that currently cover the continent developed and how they have receded in the past is essential if we are to be able to predict how those ice sheets will behave in a warmer world.
Much of BAS science is done on the Antarctic Peninsula – one of the fastest warming parts of the planet. BAS glaciologists are also studying the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, parts of which are thinning rapidly. Their work is crucial to understanding whether this thinning could signal the start of the ice sheet’s collapse, an event that would cause sea levels to rise much more than currently predicted.
On sea as well as on land, BAS scientists are investigating climate change. As the waters warm around Antarctica, ecologists at BAS are looking at how penguins, seals and the other species that make up one of the world’s largest marine ecosystems are responding.
Because the causes and effects of climate change are extraordinarily complex, assembling all the pieces of the climate change jigsaw is a huge challenge. By conducting world-class science in the Antarctic, BAS is making a significant contribution to meeting this challenge.
The evolution and ecology of Antarctic sea floor communities is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship, led by Dr Rowan Whittle, looking at the past, present and future of life at …
Environmental research relies on digital infrastructure (hardware, software and methods) to provide services that help researchers answer questions about the environment around us, and innovators to work out ways that …
The Arctic Summer-time Cyclone Project is a joint project of scientists from the University of Reading, University of East Anglia and the British Antarctic Survey with expertise in atmospheric dynamics, …
The Big Thaw is an ambitious new UKRI/NERC-funded Highlight Topic project assessing past, present and future changes in global mountain water resources by studying snow/ice accumulation and melt in the …
Digital Twinning is next generation technology for data fusion and computer modelling enabling us to rapidly get answers to “what-if” questions. Digital Twins (DTs) are already in operation in industry …
The NERC funded SIWHA_CO2 project “Sea Ice and Westerly winds during the Holocene in coastal Antarctica, to better constrain oceanic CO2 uptake” will be a breakthrough in our understanding of how …
In order to accurately predict impacts of space weather and climate variability on the whole atmosphere we need an accurate representation of the whole atmosphere. The mesosphere (~50-95 km altitude) …
Polar Zero forms a major part of British Antarctic Survey’s (BAS) multi-media engagement plan for COP 26. Ice Stories draws on personal anecdotes, memories and oral testimonies from the national …
The Polar Zero experience at Glasgow Science Centre is a fusion of science and art made for COP26 climate summit
This collaborative project is born from exploring novel ways of visualising environmental data and telling the climate change story. Read more about the project and the science behind it through the project page.
27 September, 2017
Latest satellite images reveal a new 100-square-mile iceberg emerging from Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier. The calving event did not come as a complete surprise, but is a troubling sign with …
25 September, 2017
Arctic sea ice extent has likely reached its minimum extent for the year, at 4.64 million square kilometers (1.79 million square miles) on September 13, 2017, according to a team …
4 September, 2017
A new study of the marine invertebrates living in the seas around Antarctica reveals there will be more ‘losers’ than ‘winners’ over the next century as the Antarctic seafloor warms. …
18 July, 2017
Last week (12th July) Dr Emily Shuckburgh travelled to Pittsburgh, USA, and received the prestigious 2017 I. E. Block Community Lecture prize from SIAM – the Society for Industrial and …
12 July, 2017
After months of ‘hanging by a thread’ a vast iceberg the size of Norfolk has finally broken off Antarctica’s Larsen C Ice Shelf. Around 30 metres of this 190m thick …
5 July, 2017
Reporting this week (Wednesday 5 July) in the journal Nature, an international team of researchers led by British Antarctic Survey (BAS) explains that wind-driven incursions of warm water forced the …
3 July, 2017
A new £10 million research programme to investigate how the Arctic Ocean is changing kicked off last week (Friday 30 June) with its first research expedition to the Barents Sea. …
29 June, 2017
Ice-free areas in Antarctica could expand by close to 25 per cent by 2100 and drastically change the biodiversity of the continent, research published this week in Nature has shown. …
23 June, 2017
A series of unprecedented storms over the Southern Ocean likely caused the most dramatic decline in Antarctic sea ice seen to date, a new study finds. Antarctic sea ice – …
25 April, 2017
New research describes for the first time the role that warm, dry winds play in influencing the behaviour of Antarctic ice shelves. Presenting this week at a European conference scientists …