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.
1 January, 1996
1 November, 1995
6 April, 2022
Researchers have used advanced ocean modelling techniques to reveal how greenhouse gas emissions contribute to warmer oceans and resulting melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
29 March, 2022
A £5m project funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) to investigate the complex changes seen in sea ice around the Antarctic begins this month (March 2022) as the …
28 February, 2022
A new report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published today (28 February) has outlined the causes, impacts and solutions to climate change.
21 February, 2022
A new study has found that the world’s second-largest ice sheet is generating huge amounts of heat. Researchers including BAS oceanographer Dr Keith Nicholls have observed extremely high rates of melting at the bottom of the Greenland Ice Sheet.
18 February, 2022
The first ice core drilling campaign of Beyond Epica-Oldest Ice has been successfully completed at the remote Little Dome C site in Antarctica – one of the most extreme places …
14 December, 2021
Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier is retreating rapidly as a warming ocean slowly erases its ice from below, leading to a faster flow, more fracturing and a threat of collapse, according to …
30 November, 2021
The first campaign to drill Antarctica’s oldest ice starts this month (November). Beyond EPICA-Oldest Ice aims to drill an ice core to collect a record of past climate spanning 1.5 million years
3 November, 2021
British Antarctic Survey is one of seven Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) supported centres and the Met Office, which will work together as the new UK National Climate Science Partnership (UKNCSP) to respond to threats posed by a rapidly changing climate by putting climate science at the forefront of the solutions agenda.
13 October, 2021
A network of international researchers launches a European collaboration this week ( 14 October 2021). This collaboration will train a new generation of scientists to understand how past climate changes …
12 October, 2021
A dramatic art installation symbolising our warming climate will be launched at the Cambridge Cleantech annual conference on 20 October as the city’s innovators and scientists gather together to brainstorm …