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%.

RIFT-TIP

RIFT-TIP is a NERC-funded scientific project investigating iceberg calving and fracture growth in ice shelves.  The RIFT-TIP team will work primarily out of Halley Research Station, using seismic, radar, ApRES …

A boat floating on top of a snow covered mountain

KANG-GLAC

The Greenland Ice Sheet is decaying at an accelerating rate in response to climate change. Warm ocean waters moving through the fjords eventually meet the faces of marine-terminating glaciers, increasing …

A snow covered mountain

The Big Thaw

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 …

Bedmap

Bedmap is a collaborative community project with the aim to produce a new map and datasets of Antarctic ice thickness and bed topography for the international glaciology and geophysical community, …

Background pattern

Digital Twins of the Polar Regions

Digital Twinning is next generation technology for data fusion and computer modelling enabling us to rapidly get answers to “what-if” questions. DTs are already in operation in industry and involve …

A man flying a kite in the snow

SIWHA

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 …

Ice Floor installation - close up of ice core

Ice Floor Sci-Art Installation

Ice Floor, is an immersive exhibition commissioned by engineering consultants Arup. UK born artist Wayne Binitie created the installation.

A close up of a refrigerator.

P-RAID

The ice sheets of Antarctica can be several kilometres thick, and contain precious information about the past climate. However, the bottoms of the ice sheets are melting, erasing this information. …

A body of water.

Giant West Antarctic iceberg disintegrates

29 November, 2017

An animation of the giant iceberg that calved off the Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica just over two months ago shows an unexpected break up. Satellite images revealed a …

A view of a snow covered slope.

New Antarctic heat map reveals sub-ice hotspots

13 November, 2017

An international team of scientists, led by British Antarctic Survey (BAS), has produced a new map showing how much heat from the Earth’s interior is reaching the base of the …

A snowy landscape with the sea in the background

Large iceberg breaks off Pine Island Glacier

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 …

A plane flying in the air.

Huge Antarctic iceberg finally breaks free

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 …

A man flying through the air on a rock.

Study shows ice sheet loss over the last 11,000 years

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 …

Rifting in Larsen B Ice Shelf before its breakup in 2001

New footage shows crack in Larsen C Ice Shelf

21 February, 2017

British Antarctic Survey (BAS) recently captured this video footage of a huge crack in the Larsen C Ice Shelf, on the Antarctic Peninsula. Currently a huge iceberg, roughly the size …