Over the past 40 years, ice cores have revealed more about climate change than any other scientific technique. Over the last few decades, satellites have detected changes to the amount of sea ice that covers the polar oceans. Since 1979 summer sea-ice extent in the Arctic has reduced at 10% per decade. Some major glaciers that drain the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets have accelerated by as much as 50%.

A close up of a snow covered slope.

Geophysical Habitat of Subglacial Thwaites

GHOST is an ice-based project which will examine the bed beneath the Thwaites Glacier, to assess whether conditions are likely to allow rapid retreat, or if the retreat may slow …

A collection of small marine creatures

Larsen-C Benthos

On 12 July 2017, the Larsen-C Ice Shelf calved one of the largest iceberg originating from the Antarctic Peninsula ever recorded. As iceberg A68 moves north, it  leaves behind an …

Data As Art

DATA AS ART is an ongoing science & art project in development at NERC’s British Antarctic Survey (BAS). It visualises science data (in its widest definition), to create stunning and …

A close up of a hand.

SubICE

The Sub-Antarctic – ice coring expedition (SubICE), part of the international Antarctic Circumnavigation Expedition (ACE), successfully drilled several shallow ice cores, from five of the remote and globally significant sub-Antarctic …

Beyond Epica

A decade ago, the European EPICA project completed drilling a deep ice core at Dome C, revealing the close link between climate and atmospheric greenhouse gases over the past 800,000 …

A close up of a person.

Data as Art: POLAR AESTHETICS

British Antarctic Survey has an ongoing science & art collaboration with Royal College of Art PhD candidate Wayne Binitie. Wayne has visited BAS a number of times to develop his …

A close up of a colorful background.

PolarGAP

The polar regions have the capacity to amaze and astound, but despite the considerable progress of recent decades we still know far less about them than less remote parts of …

DATA AS ART #10

Ice layers Radio waves can be transmitted down through an ice sheet, ice stream or glacier and are reflected off the internal layers in the ice as well as off …

A close up of a piece of paper.

Ice sheets growing from the base

7 November, 2018

Fresh water freezing onto the bottom of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets leads to the formation of spectacular plume-shaped features, according to new research published today (7th November) in …

A group of people standing on top of a snow covered mountain.

Prestigious award for BAS early career scientist

6 November, 2018

Congratulations to Dr Emilie Capron who has been awarded the prestigious Early Career Scientist Award of the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG). Dr Capron is a palaeoclimatologist at British …

A close up of a snow covered mountain.

Measuring glaciers in the Himalayan mountains

11 October, 2018

Technology pioneered in Antarctica could soon be providing much-needed data on the amount of ice in the glaciers of High Mountain Asia thanks to an ingenious helicopter-mounted, low-frequency radar developed …

A group of people on a boat.

Boaty returns from first mission under the ice

13 March, 2018

The yellow high-tech autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), affectionately known as Boaty McBoatface, has successfully returned from an ambitious science expedition deep below half a kilometre of ice. It is the …