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24% of West Antarctic ice is now unstable
In only 25 years, ocean melting has caused ice thinning to spread across West Antarctica so rapidly that a quarter of its glacier ice is now affected, according to a new study.
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+19 +1
Life thrives in Antarctic hot spots created by seal and penguin poop
In the desolate Antarctic landscape, life is hard to come by—unless you’re near some seal and penguin poop. The nitrogen-rich feces enrich the soil and create hot spots with lots of biological diversity that can extend more than 1000 meters beyond the borders of penguin and seal colonies, according to a new study.
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Polar Warning: Even Antarctica’s Coldest Region Is Starting to Melt
No place on Earth is colder than East Antarctica. Home to the South Pole and making up two-thirds of the southernmost continent, the vast ice sheets of East Antarctica — formed over tens of millions of years — are nearly three miles thick in places. The temperature commonly hovers around -67 degrees Fahrenheit (-55 degrees Celsius); in 2010, some spots on East Antarctica’s polar plateau plunged to a record-breaking -144 degrees F.
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A hidden province of volcanoes in West Antarctica may accelerate sea level rise
Hundreds of volcanoes could be hiding beneath almost 2,000 meters of solid Antarctic ice, an area twice the size of Texas, according to data collected by a magnetic sensor on an aircraft of Antarctica’s subglacial topography. If these volcanoes begin to erupt, they could accelerate the human-caused melting of the West Antarctica Ice Sheet (WAIS) …
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Iceberg twice the size of NYC about to break off of Antarctica
An iceberg twice the size of New York City is about to break off of Antarctica's Brunt Ice Shelf, according to NASA. "Cracking across Antarctica’s Brunt Ice Shelf is set to release an iceberg w/ an area about 2x the size of NYC. The splitting could result in an uncertain future for the shelf’s scientific research & human presence," NASA said in a tweet.
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A hole big enough to fit two-thirds of Manhattan has formed under an Antarctic glacier
Scientists say if Thwaites collapses, it could trigger a catastrophic rise in global sea levels, flooding coastal cities around the world.
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Scientists Have Detected an Enormous Cavity Growing Beneath Antarctica
Antarctica is not in a good place. In the space of only decades, the continent has lost trillions of tonnes of ice at alarming rates we can't keep up with, even in places we once thought were safe. Now, a stunning new void has been revealed amidst this massive vanishing act, and it's a big one: a gigantic cavity growing under West Antarctica that scientists say covers two-thirds the footprint of Manhattan and stands almost 300 metres (984 ft) tall.
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Reflections on Antarctica
Colin O’Brady and Louis Rudd spent almost two months racing across Antarctica, a journey that killed an explorer who attempted it in 2016. Back in warmer climes, they spoke about the race of a lifetime.
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UCI/JPL: Antarctica losing six times more ice mass annually now than 40 years ago
Climate change-induced melting will raise global sea levels for decades to come
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Antarctica's contribution to sea level rise was mitigated by snowfall – Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet
A new NASA-led study has determined that an increase in snowfall accumulation over Antarctica during the 20th century mitigated sea level rise by 0.4 inches. However, Antarctica’s additional ice mass gained from snowfall makes up for just about a third of its current ice loss. “Our findings don’t mean that Antarctica is growing; it’s still losing mass, even with the extra snowfall,” said Brooke Medley, a glaciologist with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland...
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Tourists may be making Antarctica’s penguins sick
You can give your cat the flu. You can also pass pneumonia to a chimpanzee or tuberculosis to a bird. This kind of human-to-animal disease transmission, known as reverse zoonosis, has been seen on every continent except one: Antarctica. Now, human-linked pathogens in bird poop reveal, for the first time, that even animals on this isolated, ice-bound landmass can pick up a bug from tourists or visiting scientists. This newly identified infection route could have devastating consequences for Antarctic bird colonies, including population collapse and even extinction.
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+23 +1
East Antarctica glacial stronghold melting as seas warm
Nasa detects ice retreat probably linked to ocean changes in region once thought stable
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Beneath Antarctica’s Ice Is a Graveyard of Dead Continents
The eastern section of Antarctica is buried beneath a thick ice sheet. Some scientists simply assumed that under that cold mass there was nothing more than a “frozen tectonic block,” a somewhat homogeneous mass that distinguished it from the mixed up geologies of other continents. But with the help of data from a discontinued European satellite, scientists have now found that East Antarctica is in fact a graveyard of continental remnants.
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No One Has Ever Crossed Antarctica Alone. Two Men Are Trying Right Now.
Colin O’Brady and Louis Rudd are both trying to become the first to finish the 921-mile odyssey on ice completely unsupported. It is a journey that killed a man who tried two years ago.
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Climate change is unraveling this Antarctic ecosystem
As the Antarctic Peninsula heats up, the rules of life there are being ripped apart. Alarmed scientists aren’t sure what all the change means for the future. By Craig Welch, photographs by Paul Nicklen, Cristina Mittermeier, Keith Ladzinski.
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Antarctic's future in doubt after plan for world's biggest marine reserve is blocked
Environmental groups say Russia, China and Norway played part in rejecting plan.
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NASA's Found a Weird, Rectangular Iceberg in the Antarctica
Look at that iceberg. It's beautiful. Perfectly rectangular. An object of near geometric perfection jutting into a polar sea of the usual squiggly, chaotic randomness of the natural world. It calls to mind the monolith from "2001: A Space Odyssey." But, unlike the monolith from that very weird movie, this iceberg was not deposited on this world by space aliens. Instead, as Kelly Brunt, an ice scientist with NASA and at the University of Maryland, explained, it was likely formed by a process that's fairly common along the edges of icebergs.
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Nasa photographs rectangular iceberg
Nasa has released a striking photo of a rectangular iceberg floating in the Weddell Sea off Antarctica.
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Strange 'singing' heard coming from the Antarctic ice
Scientists have heard strange "singing" noises coming out of the ice shelf. The low-frequency noises – which sound a little like moaning when sped up – could help researchers track the ice shelves as they collapse. The singing tones come out of the surface of the massive Ross Ice Shelf when the winds blowing across the snow dunes cause it to vibrate. That means they produce the "tones" almost constantly, and now scientists have found they can listen to them.
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Eerie hum discovered in Antarctica
Scientists say this sound could be used to monitor how Antarctica's largest ice shelf is responding to climate change.
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