Filchner Ice Shelf System, Antarctica
Understanding the contribution that polar ice sheets make to global sea-level rise is recognised internationally as urgent. The mission of this five-year project is to capture new observations and data …
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.
Understanding the contribution that polar ice sheets make to global sea-level rise is recognised internationally as urgent. The mission of this five-year project is to capture new observations and data …
A strategic framework to connect science and society
iStar-D will identify the potential contribution to sea-level rise, from ice locked in the Amundsen Sea sector of Antarctica
PI: Markus M. Frey Co-I’s: X. Yang, R. Mulvaney NERC Grant: NE/N011813/1 The ozone layer shields all land-based life forms from harmful ultraviolet radiation; and indirectly influences the climate at …
physicists, chemists, biologists, economists, and sociologists from 21 institutes in 11 countries across Europe assess the rapid retreat and collapse of Arctic sea-ice cover
5 November, 2018
20 October, 2018
1 October, 2018
29 June, 2020
The South Pole has warmed at over three times the global rate since 1989, according to a paper published in Nature Climate Change today (29 June 2020). This warming period was …
25 June, 2020
BAS researchers have contributed to a new briefing paper about the Arctic published this week (25 June 2020). Working with a team at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London, …
17 June, 2020
Scientists have discovered that summer sea ice in the Weddell Sea area of Antarctica has decreased by one million square kilometres – an area twice the size of Spain – …
20 May, 2020
Scientists have discovered where a whale species that feeds around the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia breeds during the winter months. This understanding of where the animals migrate from will …
7 May, 2020
Warm winter spells have increased in frequency and duration two- to three times over since 1878, according to a new study published this week (6 May 2020). In a new …
29 April, 2020
Two new research projects – in partnership with British Antarctic Survey engineers – will drill deeper than ever before in Antarctica and in space. The first project, called INCISED, is …
1 April, 2020
An international team of researchers has provided a new and unprecedented perspective on the climate history of Antarctica. From a sediment core collected from the seafloor in West Antarctica, they …
26 February, 2020
Climate change could add around 20% to the global cost of extreme weather events by 2040, according to early findings from Cambridge researchers. The findings come from the Cambridge Climate …
28 January, 2020
Teams from the US and UK have successfully completed scientific fieldwork in one of the most remote and hostile areas of West Antarctica – coinciding with the 200th anniversary of …
29 November, 2019
Two studies published in a special issue of the journal Science Advances this week (27 November 2019) highlight the fragility of the Antarctic and its ecosystems in the lead up …