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nanning

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #550 on: December 14, 2019, 04:59:57 PM »
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/12/antarctic-video-reveals-deepest-canyon-earth
  By Paul Voosen

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA—Despite scientists’ best efforts to probe the land beneath Antarctica’s ice sheets with radar, the continent’s sheer size and remoteness has left many gaps in existing surveys. That changed this week with a new map, called BedMachine Antarctica, released at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union here and published yesterday in Nature Geoscience.

(3m08)
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kassy

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #551 on: December 16, 2019, 03:13:52 PM »
Some cool antarctic research:

Barrels of ancient Antarctic air aim to track history of rare gas

An Antarctic field campaign last winter led by the US and Australia has successfully extracted some of the largest samples of air dating from the 1870s until today. Researchers will use the samples to look for changes in the molecules (hydroxyls) that scrub the atmosphere of methane and other gases.

...

Air from deeper ice cores drilled in Antarctica and Greenland has provided a record of carbon dioxide and methane, two greenhouse gases, going back thousands of years. While carbon dioxide has a lifetime of decades to centuries, an even more potent gas, methane, has a lifetime of just nine or 10 years.

Pinpointing the exact lifetime of methane, and how it has changed over the years, depends on the concentration of hydroxyl. That number is important for the global climate models used to study past and future climate.

To trace the history of hydroxyl, a fleeting molecule with a lifetime of less than a millionth of a second, a field campaign in late 2018 and early 2019 drilled ice to study this very reactive gas by examining its slightly more plentiful companion, carbon with 14 neutrons bonded to an oxygen atom, or "carbon-14 monoxide," which is chemically destroyed by hydroxyl and so tracks hydroxyl's concentrations.

...

The day after extracting a core, the team would clean the ice and place it in a device of Neff and his University of Rochester postdoctoral supervisor Vasilii Petrenko's design: a 335-liter vacuum chamber in a warm bath to melt the ice and process the samples at their source, to avoid contamination and collect the biggest air samples.

"A single sample size was about 400 or 500 kilograms of ice, about the same weight as a grand piano, to get enough of that carbon-14 monoxide molecule," Neff said. "At the field camp we turned 500 kilos of ice into one 50-liter canister of air."

...

Analysis over the coming months will aim to produce a concentration curve for carbon-14 monoxide and hydroxyl over the decades, similar to the now-famous curves for carbon dioxide and methane. The curves show how gas concentrations have changed in the atmosphere since the industrial era.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191213092515.htm
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blumenkraft

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #552 on: December 22, 2019, 04:31:13 PM »
Site for the Oldest Ice core in Antarctica identified – drilling can commence

Quote
[20. December 2019]
This week, an international team of researchers determined the final drilling coordinates for the oldest ice core in Antarctica, and began setting up camp on the Antarctic Plateau. When the time came to choose exactly where the drill should be used, the researchers relied on high-resolution data from a newly developed ice radar system, which they had used for the first time earlier this month in the target zone ‘Little Dome C’. In this region, located 40 kilometres to the west of the French-Italian research station ‘Dome Concordia’, the ice covering East Antarctica is ca. 2,800 metres thick. The experts now believe the oldest ice – up to 1.5 million years old – is at a depth of 2,550 metres. The goal of the European research project ‘Beyond EPICA’ is to collect an ice core that will make it possible to seamlessly reconstruct the climatic history of the past 1.5 million years; so far, we only have data on the past 800,000 years. The work currently going on at the drill site is only preparatory; the actual drilling is slated to begin in the Antarctic summer of 2020/21

Link >> https://www.awi.de/en/about-us/service/press/press-release/site-for-the-oldest-ice-core-in-antarctica-identified-drilling-can-commence.html

blumenkraft

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #553 on: December 26, 2019, 12:40:02 PM »

JMP

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #554 on: December 28, 2019, 07:59:19 AM »
Record one day ice melt. 

'MAR forced by GFS suggests that the highest melt extent over Antarctica in the modern area (>1979) has been reached on 24-Dec-2019 with ~15%. From Nov 2019 until today, the production of melt water is also a record with 230% higher than average but the melting season is not ended'

'The record in recent decades for the highest level of ice to melt in Antarctica in one day was reached on Christmas Eve, data suggests.

Around 15 percent of the continent's surface melted on Monday, according to the Global Forecast System (GFS) by the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP). The data comes from the Modèle Atmosphérique Régional (MAR), a model used for meteorological and climatic research.

Xavier Fettweis, a climatologist at the University of Liège in Belgium, who tweeted the data on Friday, said this is the highest melt extent in Antarctica in the modern era, since 1979. He added the production of melt water is a record 230 percent higher than average since November this year. That's despite the melting season not yet being over.

For the first time, Fettweis said, the melting seemed to explain a negative anomaly in data on Antarctica's surface mass balance (SMB). This is the net balance between what causes a glacier's surface to grow or deplete, for instance because it evaporates or melts away.

"It should be noted that this process is currently missing in most of SMB estimations over Antarctica as melt has been negligible until now. But the climate is changing..." Fettweis said.

Fettweis told Newsweek Antarctica has been "significantly warmer than average" this melting season. But he stressed the data is from a model, and not an in situ observation. The melting could be driven by a number of factors, and experts will need to wait two to three melting seasons to confirm what is going on.'



https://www.newsweek.com/record-hit-ice-melt-antarctica-day-climate-emergency-1479326?fbclid=IwAR21MRU2ygZ6LXmGGp9STw2GJetcPcM6qDNJ5XQq-yAwqyLvBryp1gK-0YY
« Last Edit: December 28, 2019, 08:04:49 AM by JMP »

vox_mundi

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #555 on: December 28, 2019, 05:05:50 PM »
^ Related

http://climato.be/cms/index.php?climato=the-2020-melt-season-over-antarctica-as-simulated-by-marv3-10


Graph showing the normal melt season, the maximum and minimum values, and what’s happened in 2019.

---------------------------------

Submarine to Explore Why Antarctic Glacier is Melting So Quickly
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/28/submarine-to-explore-why-antarctic-glacier-is-melting-so-quickly

An international team of scientists has reached the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica and is preparing to drill through more than half a kilometre of ice into the dark waters beneath.

The 600-metre deep borehole will allow researchers to lower down a torpedo-shaped robotic submarine that will explore the underside of the ice shelf to better understand why it is melting so fast.

Thwaites glacier, which is part of the west Antarctic ice sheet, has lost an estimated 540bn tonnes of ice since the 1980s. But recent measurements show that the melting of the glacier is speeding up, sending even more ice into the Amundsen Sea.

... “Nobody has ever been able to drill through the ice close to where it starts to float and that is the critical point,” Vaughan told the Guardian. “If everything goes to plan, they will drill the hole and then ream it out until it’s about 50cm across, and then lower in the autonomous underwater vehicle. That will actually go into the cavity and send back images in real time so they can navigate it right up to the point where the ice starts to float.”

... Thwaites itself contains enough ice to raise global sea levels by more than 2 feet (61cm), but it holds back other inland glaciers that contain far more ice, enough to raise global sea levels by more than 2 metres.

-------------------------------

During their site assessment, the safety team found an enormous crevasse near the grounding zone. Does this mean we don't have to drill a hole now?
https://twitter.com/HotWaterOnIce/status/1207215218646028288

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kassy

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #556 on: January 09, 2020, 11:02:36 AM »
UK meteorite hunt thwarted by equipment damage

UK scientists' bid to find a hidden population of iron meteorites in the Antarctic has been beaten into submission.

The University of Manchester team had developed a detection system it hoped would reveal the metal objects sitting just under the ice surface.

But after 18 days of survey work, the equipment has broken beyond repair.

It seems the components couldn't cope with the pounding they received as the detector was dragged across hard ice.

"This constant battering from the ice meant that anything which could fail did, and once repaired as best we could, a weakness in components remained for further exploitation," expedition co-lead Dr Geoff Evatt reported on Wednesday.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51040336
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blumenkraft

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kassy

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #558 on: January 13, 2020, 02:31:00 PM »
Mussels could be growing in ANTARCTICA within the next decade as human activity and climate change wreak havoc on the frozen continent's biodiversity


Mussels could be growing in Antarctica in the next ten years thanks to warmer waters caused by climate change and 'increased human activity', researchers claim.

Scientists analysed hundreds of studies to determine which species are 'most likely' to colonise the Antarctic Peninsula Region by 2030.

The British Antarctic Survey created a list of their 13 most concerning species, which features three species of mussel - Common blue, Chilean and Mediterranean.

Others on the list of invasive species include crabs, kelp and buttonweed. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-7881167/Mussels-growing-ANTARCTICA-decade.html

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/gcb.14938
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kassy

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #559 on: January 24, 2020, 07:16:45 PM »
Lewis Pugh defies death to swim Antarctic river

Plymouth-born climate activist Lewis Pugh has today completed his most perilous swim to date, swimming for 10 minutes 17 seconds under the East Antarctic ice sheet.

Mr Pugh, 50, who completed the feat wearing nothing more than his swimming trunks, cap and goggles, is calling for the creation of a network of Marine Protected Areas around Antarctica.

...

The extreme conditions of East Antarctica, which holds the record for the Earth’s lowest recorded temperature, ensured that this was the toughest swim of Mr Pugh’s life.

He braved water temperatures barely above freezing and a severe wind-chill factor.

There was also  the constant threat of the glacial river suddenly emptying out though a crack in the ice and dragging him hundreds of metres to the rock bed below.

https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/lewis-pugh-defies-death-swim-3775031

Pretty crazy stuff...
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Stephan

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #560 on: January 24, 2020, 08:31:28 PM »
Really pretty crazy.
I hope this type of exercise remains voluntary and not mandatory...  ;)
It is too late just to be concerned about Climate Change

Tom_Mazanec

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #561 on: January 24, 2020, 09:15:43 PM »
I'm just glad he didn't win the Darwin Award!

HapHazard

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #562 on: January 24, 2020, 10:41:25 PM »
I'm just glad he didn't win the Darwin Award!
haha Well, it's sort of his thing so not that huge of a deal for him, compared to the rest of us. My friend is also an ice swimmer. He was a last-minute dropout of the 2013 Bering Strait Swim Relay, actually (some poor/unsafe planning caused him to play it safe) and until recently would regularly swim in a local lake (Okanagan) here all winter long. Nuts! But no big deal to him.
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Mr. Ä

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #563 on: January 25, 2020, 09:39:27 AM »

gerontocrat

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #564 on: January 25, 2020, 12:48:33 PM »
Widespread Melt on the George VI Ice Shelf

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/146189/widespread-melt-on-the-george-vi-ice-shelf
There has been record surface melt on the edges of Antarctica since mid-November, that I am speculating is reducing sea ice melt.

I have written about it on the Antarctic Sea Ice Extent thread. Last post @
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,1759.msg245950.html#msg245950
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philopek

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #565 on: January 30, 2020, 06:28:31 PM »
For those who like actual imagery i attached a few nice pics that were shot today by an long-standing, since 60 years, friend of mine, along the western coast of the very tip of the antarctic peninsula, South Shetland Islands, Neumayer Channel.

There is more to come if these are received well.

philopek

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #566 on: January 30, 2020, 06:30:42 PM »
due to the 4 images limit here come 4 more

philopek

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #567 on: January 30, 2020, 06:31:53 PM »
4 more

philopek

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #568 on: January 30, 2020, 06:32:16 PM »
and the rest for today

the cutouts are approximate

gerontocrat

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #569 on: January 30, 2020, 06:33:28 PM »
Keep 'em coming !
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blumenkraft

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #570 on: January 30, 2020, 07:08:43 PM »
Yeah, indeed!

kassy

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #571 on: January 30, 2020, 07:09:51 PM »
Although possibly in the pictures thread:
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,93.0.html

Are all the houses red so it is easier to find them in really bad weather?
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philopek

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #572 on: January 30, 2020, 08:24:16 PM »
Although possibly in the pictures thread:
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,93.0.html

Are all the houses red so it is easier to find them in really bad weather?

thanks for linking me, i was really looking for an image thread but my old eyes cheated on my (of course i just didn't look good enough) sorry. Should he send new ones i'll post them there, he promised to do so if the boat won't sink (kidding)

about the house color, i dunno but would make sense.

perhaps one of the "Swedish" users of this forum can tell because "Swedish" and houses in other nordic countries are often painted dark red as well. Often there is a story behind such customs but i simply don't know the correct answer. let's see if someone comes up with one.

gerontocrat

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #573 on: January 30, 2020, 08:40:39 PM »
Although possibly in the pictures thread:
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,93.0.html

about the house color, i dunno but would make sense.

perhaps one of the "Swedish" users of this forum can tell because "Swedish" and houses in other nordic countries are often painted dark red as well. Often there is a story behind such customs but i simply don't know the correct answer. let's see if someone comes up with one.
I am English. A long time ago I did some development projects in Africa for the Swedish International Development Agency. They sent me to Sweden to learn Portuguese. They took me to the mine where the copper to make red dye comes from.

Basically, falu red or Falun red is a dye that is commonly used in wooden cottages, barns, and house. The paint's origin is from various copper mines in Sweden. Being the mine at Falun, in the province of Dalarna the most known one. The paint consists of water, rye flour, linseed oil and tailings from the copper mines.
"Para a Causa do Povo a Luta Continua!"
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kassy

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #574 on: January 30, 2020, 09:25:14 PM »
They sent me to Sweden to learn Portuguese.

That would freak me out. WTF not just go to Portugal?  :)

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falu_red

Quote
In Finland, falu red is known as punamulta ("red earth") in Finnish and rödmylla ("red dirt") in Swedish, after the pigment, which consists of finely divided hematite, iron(III) oxide (Fe2O3). Since the binder is starch, the paint is permeable to water.

...

The pigment historically originated from mines at Falun, in the province of Dalarna. It was a side product of calcination of copper ore. Mixed with linseed oil and rye flour, it was found to form an excellent anti-weathering paint.


Wikipedia says that no one lives there just for the fun of it so these buildings are research related.
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pikaia

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #575 on: February 07, 2020, 09:59:24 AM »
"Antarctica has logged its hottest temperature on record, with an Argentinian research station thermometer reading 18.3C, beating the previous record by 0.8C."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/07/antarctica-logs-hottest-temperature-on-record-with-a-reading-of-183c

ArcticMelt2

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #576 on: February 08, 2020, 04:58:24 PM »
The maximum value at the station was +18.4С

https://corporatedispatch.com/antarctica-records-hottest-temperature-ever-18-3-18-4-degrees-celsius/

Quote
However the final maximum was reported to be 18.4°C. 18.3 was a provisional value at 15UTC.

That surpassed the previous record of 63.5 degrees Fahrenheit (17.5 Celsius) set on March 24, 2015 at the same location. Temperature records from Esperanza date back to 1961.


sidd

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #577 on: February 13, 2020, 08:22:59 AM »
Very nice paper on detecting malt in Antarctica: doi: 10.5194/tc-14-539-2020

Open access.

They use  the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite L-band at 1.4 and 19GHz

"the sensitivity of 1.4 GHz signal to liquid water is significantly weaker than at 19 GHz if the water is only present in the uppermost tens of centimetres of the snowpack. Conversely, 1.4 GHz measurements are sensitive to water when spread over at least 1 m and when present in depths up to hundreds of metres. "

I attach figs 2 and 3.

sidd

ShortBrutishNasty

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #578 on: February 17, 2020, 05:14:26 AM »
Now over 20 grad Celsius?

https://www.sciencealert.com/antarctica-just-smashed-a-new-balmy-heat-record

The thermometer was only 1.5 meters above ground?  Not the normal 2 meters?  The WMO hasn't weighed in on it yet.

How significant is this?

Thanks in advance.
Thomas Hobbes , English philosopher 1588-1679

kassy

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #579 on: February 17, 2020, 01:09:07 PM »
He cautioned that the reading, taken at a monitoring station on an island off the continent's northern tip on February 9, "has no meaning in terms of a climate-change trend," because it is a one-off temperature and not part of a long-term data set.

The 18,4 C above is from a station with a continuous record and this one is not so it is unclear if the temperature is hot for the place or just normal.

Water temperatures near glaciers are much more important.
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kassy

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #580 on: February 23, 2020, 10:09:52 AM »
Heat wave melts 20% of snow cover from Antarctic island in days

Antarctica's Eagle Island now has a side that's almost ice-free following this month's searing heat wave in the region, images released by NASA show.

Why it maters: "The warm spell caused widespread melting on nearby glaciers," NASA said in its report. It's the third major melt event of the 2019-2020 Southern Hemisphere summer, following warm spells in January and last November, according to the United Nation's World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

Such persistent warmth was not typical in Antarctica until the 21st century, but it has become more common in recent years."
— NASA statement

...

What they're saying: Mauri Pelto, a glaciologist at Nichols College, who observed the warming event as 0.9 square miles of snowpack became saturated with meltwater, said in NASA's report: "I haven’t seen melt ponds develop this quickly in Antarctica. You see these kinds of melt events in Alaska and Greenland, but not usually in Antarctica."


more on:
https://www.axios.com/antarctica-eagle-island-melts-heat-nasa-images-39244722-5909-4723-9227-1100569d66de.html
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kassy

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #581 on: February 26, 2020, 04:12:38 PM »
Kelp Rafts Are Bringing Invaders to Antarctica

Antarctica is, for the most part, cut off from the rest of the planet by swirling ocean currents, raging winds, and frigid temperatures. The continent’s physical isolation has long been thought to have kept it well protected from invasions of nonnative species. But the discovery of living creatures on kelp rafts in Antarctic waters—including some known to be invasive in other cold regions—shows that the physical barriers are not insurmountable and invasions could become more common as the climate warms.

...

Huw Griffiths, a marine biologist with the British Antarctic Survey, and his colleagues, however, recently collected more than a dozen kelp rafts from the Southern Ocean and the beaches of Antarctic islands. The rafts, which were made of kelp species that are not native to Antarctica, were transporting thousands of other species.

...

One species the scientists found, a tiny colonial animal known as a bryozoan, is particularly worrying. It is known to be a harmful invader in other cold water regions. If it made the jump from a raft to a native kelp, it would encrust the seaweed, cutting off its access to sunlight with potentially devastating consequences. “The local kelp is a major part of the ecosystem, and it may not have defenses against this bryozoan,” says Griffiths.

Even more worrying, he says, is where the bryozoan was found—on Deception Island, in the relatively warm water in the flooded caldera of an active volcano. “It’s one of the easiest places to get a foothold [in Antarctica] because it’s missing all the things that stop animals from getting established” such as the typical deep freeze seen on the mainland, says Griffiths. “From there, invaders would have a chance to adapt and spread.

“For so long we have believed Antarctica was isolated and cut off, but this shows that there are routes in.”

And new oceanographic models explain how: though still a rare occurrence, storms could occasionally push kelp rafts south. And with an estimated 70 million kelp rafts adrift in the Southern Ocean at any time, it’s perhaps not surprising that some have been found washed up on Antarctic beaches.

https://www.hakaimagazine.com/news/kelp-rafts-are-bringing-invaders-to-antarctica/
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IceConcerned

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #582 on: February 28, 2020, 10:43:44 PM »
I do not know where to post this, but Wilkins ice sheet is showing signs of getting a drumming short term and there is on top of that that eastern crack inland that could expand quite quickly in my mind....

kassy

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #583 on: March 05, 2020, 04:00:04 PM »
Almost alien: Antarctic subglacial lakes are cold, dark and full of secrets

More than half of the planet's fresh water is in Antarctica. While most of it is frozen in the ice sheets, underneath the ice pools and streams of water flow into one another and into the Southern Ocean surrounding the continent. Understanding the movement of this water, and what is dissolved in it as solutes, reveals how carbon and nutrients from the land may support life in the coastal ocean.

...

Life beneath the ice puts up with a lot -- there is no sunlight and pressure from the ice above in combination with heat radiating up from the Earth's core is what melts the water to form the lake, so the temperature hovers just below freezing. Organic carbon, an important food source for microorganisms, is present in relatively high concentrations in Whillans Subglacial Lake, even if it lacks the verdant mess of a Midwest pond in late August. Instead, as cameras dropped down the borehole of Mercer Subglacial Lake (a neighbor of Whillans) reveal, the subglacial lake is dark, cold, full of soft and fluffy sediment, and lined with bubble-filled ice.

...

Using mass balance calculations, the team's research shows that a pool of dissolved organic carbon in the Whillans Subglacial Lake can be produced in 4.8 to 11.9 years. As the lake fills and drains, which takes about the same amount of time, all those nutrients slip and slide their way to the ice-covered coast of the Southern Ocean. Based on the team's calculations, the subglacial lakes in the region provide 5,400% more organic carbon than what microbial life in the ice-covered ocean downstream needs to survive.

"There's no photosynthesis under the ice in the ocean downstream of this lake -- this limits the available food and energy sources in a way that you wouldn't find in a surface lake or the open ocean," Vick-Majors said. "The idea is that these subglacial lakes that are upstream could provide important sources of energy and nutrients for things living in the ice-covered regions of the Southern Ocean."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200304141410.htm
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kassy

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #584 on: March 13, 2020, 02:21:38 PM »
Not really something new but interesting:

Why scientists rallied to save a museum of mud

...

Many of these cores, now housed at OSU in Corvallis, Oregon, were dredged up from the bottom of the Antarctic Ocean by researchers at Florida State University in Tallahassee. They form a set called the Antarctic Core Collection, which FSU oversaw for more than 50 years. Four years ago, however, faced with numerous staff retirements and limited lab space, administrators decided the cores needed to be relocated. 

...

The Antarctic Core Collection is the world’s largest stockpile of seafloor sediment from the Southern Ocean. Established in 1963, it includes material from 7,370 Antarctic sites.

....

Today, researchers are using more advanced technologies to reanalyze the old cores. Modern CT scans, for example, allow scientists to take high-resolution, 3-D images of the pebbles in each of the core’s layers. This helps them map when icebergs broke off Antarctica’s ice sheet: More pebbles means an iceberg calved and transported that debris. By examining iceberg movements 3 to 4 million years ago, when temperatures were warmer than today, scientists can study how iceberg calving impacted sea-level rise then, offering insight into what may happen along the coasts now, as the climate warms. “The science people are doing here is really relevant to local problems,” said Maureen Walczak, an assistant professor in oceanography at OSU and advisor for students working with the sediment cores.

...

https://www.hcn.org/issues/52.4/north-scientific-research-why-scientists-rallied-to-save-a-museum-of-mud
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mitch

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #585 on: March 13, 2020, 09:39:53 PM »
About the Antarctic core collection now at Oregon State University.  It was an archive facility at FSU. Most of the cores were collected off the USNS Eltanin, run by Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and funded by the National Science Foundation's Office of Polar Programs.  The cores were taken by dropping weighted pipes into the bottom to collect layers of sediments. The ship also did large numbers of water sampling as well as mapping the ocean bottom by geophysical methods.

https://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/research/office-of-marine-operations/history/eltanin

Sigmetnow

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #586 on: March 14, 2020, 07:44:40 PM »
“Scientists on an 11-day Greenpeace expedition to Antarctica’s Elephant Island to count chinstrap penguin nests found that thousands of penguins are missing. One chinstrap penguin colony has decreased by 77% in nearly 50 years.”

Quote
valeska (@iatemuggles) 3/12/20, 3:45 AM
i smiled i screamed i cried i cheered all in 27 seconds
https://twitter.com/iatemuggles/status/1238008076353110017
Image below, must-watch video at the link. ;)
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kassy

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #587 on: March 15, 2020, 05:20:39 PM »
Oh no the penguin nearly drowned.  ::)
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HapHazard

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #588 on: March 16, 2020, 05:18:36 AM »
OK that made me laugh way more than it should have

thanks kassy :)
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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #589 on: March 17, 2020, 11:52:49 PM »
Under the Heading more bad news:


Russia makes move on Antarcticas 513 billion barrels of oil

 >:( :'(
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Russia-Makes-Move-On-Antarcticas-513-Billion-Barrels-Of-Oil.html

kassy

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #590 on: March 23, 2020, 04:42:35 PM »
Happy birthday ice core records!  :)

Forty years of ice-core records of CO2

...

In 1980, a method was found to determine the amount of carbon dioxide in ancient air trapped in polar ice — providing direct evidence that CO2 is coupled to climate, and affects global temperatures in the past, present and future.

The answer to the puzzle came from studies of the chemistry of polar ice. At Grenoble in France, Delmas was researching the acid rain that was decimating northern European forests. Suspecting that the industrial sulfur emissions thought to be responsible might be recorded in Greenland ice, he and his students Michel Legrand and Jean-Marc Ascencio developed a technique7 for measuring ice acidity, adapted to be exceptionally sensitive to impurities and to avoid bias from ambient atmospheric CO2. They discovered that, even without volcanic or human activity, the ice was tinged with sulfuric acid arising from sulfur compounds emitted by plankton. If an ice sample contained carbonaceous dust, melting the ice would allow the background acid to react with the carbonate. This, they thought, might be producing extra CO2 in analyses of ice-core bubbles and confounding the CO2 measurements.

To test their idea, Delmas and colleagues set up a dry-extraction system that avoided melting the ice — instead, the ice was crushed under vacuum in a vessel at –40 °C. They analysed selected samples from two Antarctic ice cores (Dome C and D10), which contained very few carbonates. For ice from the past 10,000 years, they found CO2 levels comparable to then-current atmospheric values (around 300 parts per million; p.p.m.), with good reproducibility. For ice deposited during the last glacial period, around 20,000 years ago, levels were much lower, around 190 p.p.m. (Fig. 2a), thus confirming Arrhenius’s prediction.

...

Last but not least, we know that current atmospheric CO2 levels (407 p.p.m. in 2018; see go.nature.com/2j4heej) are probably unprecedented for the past 800,000 years16.

...

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00809-8

A nice general article about the science of ice cores. I never knew this method came from acid rain related research.
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kassy

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #591 on: March 28, 2020, 01:59:55 PM »
Wollongong biologist's trip to Antarctica to study ancient moss reveals impact of glacier retreat

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-28/antarctic-moss-adapts-to-climate-change/12093460

Nothing much on the science but has some pictures of King George Island.
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LRC1962

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #592 on: March 31, 2020, 06:58:43 PM »
"All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; Second,  it is violently opposed; and Third, it is accepted as self-evident."
       - Arthur Schopenhauer

kassy

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #593 on: March 31, 2020, 09:53:58 PM »
Research station in East Antarctica reports its first heatwave

Researchers at the Australian Antarctic Program reported the first recorded heatwave event at the Casey research station in East Antarctica. The event, which took place during the 2019-2020 summer, is likely to have impacted biological systems across the continent and accelerated ice melt.

Heatwaves happen when three consecutive days with both extreme and minimum temperatures are reported. Between January 23rd and 26th, the research station recorded minimum temperatures above zero and maximum above 7.5º (45.5 ºF), with the highest m9.2º C (48.5 ºF), being recorded on the 24th. The highest minimum, 2.5º C (36.5 ºF) was recorded the following morning.

The maximum is 6.9º C (44.4 ºF) higher than average for the station, while the minimum is 0.2º C (32.3 ºF) above average.

more on:
https://www.zmescience.com/science/research-station-in-east-antarctica-heatwave-246243/
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Freegrass

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #594 on: June 17, 2020, 08:49:09 AM »
It looks like particle reduction has been good for Antarctica this season...

90% of the world is religious, but somehow "love thy neighbour" became "fuck thy neighbours", if they don't agree with your point of view.

WTF happened?

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #595 on: June 17, 2020, 09:28:04 AM »
It looks like particle reduction has been good for Antarctica this season...
I wouldn't read anything in antarctic sea ice extent. It doesn't exhibit much of a trend the way the arctic does. Amount of previous season melt may be a major factoring in determining the following seasons extent.

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #596 on: June 17, 2020, 01:35:09 PM »
Pretty cold in the Southern Ocean and over Antarctica now. Anomalies are on rather low levels both long and short term, according to the CFS Reanalyzer.

ArcticMelt2

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #597 on: June 29, 2020, 08:34:22 PM »
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-0815-z

Record warming at the South Pole during the past three decades

Quote
Over the last three decades, the South Pole has experienced a record-high statistically significant warming of 0.61 ± 0.34 °C per decade, more than three times the global average. Here, we use an ensemble of climate model experiments to show this recent warming lies within the upper bounds of the simulated range of natural variability. The warming resulted from a strong cyclonic anomaly in the Weddell Sea caused by increasing sea surface temperatures in the western tropical Pacific. This circulation, coupled with a positive polarity of the Southern Annular Mode, advected warm and moist air from the South Atlantic into the Antarctic interior. These results underscore the intimate linkage of interior Antarctic climate to tropical variability. Further, this study shows that atmospheric internal variability can induce extreme regional climate change over the Antarctic interior, which has masked any anthropogenic warming signal there during the twenty-first century.

ArcticMelt2

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #598 on: June 29, 2020, 08:37:17 PM »
https://in.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-antarctica-idINKBN240210

Quote
“The end result is a massive warming,” Clem said, though he acknowledged that it’s difficult to determine exactly how much each factor played a part. With temperature records for the South Pole dating back only about 60 years, the region’s climate is little understood.

Quote
Temperatures at the South Pole, which sits on an icy plateau a mile and a half above sea level, generally range between minus 50 and minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 58 and minus 4 Fahrenheit). But the average temperature rose by 1.8 degree C for 30 years up to 2018, the study found. Globally, temperatures rose about 0.5 to 0.6 degree C during that time.

ArcticMelt2

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Re: What's new in Antarctica ?
« Reply #599 on: June 29, 2020, 09:01:51 PM »
It can be expected that after some time the same processes will begin in Antarctica and Greenland as in Vavilov Ice Cap. The landslide caps fall off into the ocean.