The water under a vulnerable Antarctic glacier is warming. Its catastrophic collapse could trigger a dramatic increase in global sea level.
Antarctica
Posted inNews
Controlled Explosions Pave the Way for Thwaites Glacier Research
Scientists detonate explosives in West Texas to prepare for fieldwork in West Antarctica.
Posted inNews
What Lies Beneath Is Important for Ice Sheets
New research reconstructing the topography of Antarctica shows that the continent has 25% less land above sea level than when ice first started to accumulate 34 million years ago.
Posted inNews
Drilling into the Past to Predict the Future
Climate change is at the center of a remarkable international drilling operation into Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf.
Posted inEditors' Vox
Antarctic Seasonal Sea Ice Melts Faster Than It Grows
Winds are thought to play a significant role in driving the asymmetric seasonal cycle of Antarctic sea ice growth and melt.
Posted inOpinions
Overcoming Ice and Stereotypes at the Bottom of the World
The Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center celebrates the 50th anniversary of the first all-women research team in Antarctica.
Posted inEditors' Vox
Science in a Frozen Ocean
It’s notoriously difficult to access, but new technologies, international collaboration, regional models, and interdisciplinary approaches are improving understanding of the Weddell Gyre.
Posted inNews
Warm Water Is Rapidly Eroding Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf
The underside of the world’s largest ice shelf is melting—by meters per year in some places—because of the seasonal inflow of water heated by the Sun, observations of the White Continent reveal.
Posted inEditors' Vox
Atmospheric Gravity Wave Science in the Polar Regions
A joint special issue explores the potential of collaboration to help understand atmospheric gravity waves in the Polar Regions and their effect on global circulation.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Very Warm Water Observed Along West Antarctic Ice Shelf
Two years of mooring observations at the edge of the continental shelf show that wind stress and upwelling control the inflow of some of the warmest water observed at an ice shelf front in Antarctica.