Scientists are getting a much clearer picture of the retreat of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet over thousands of years, and of the forces driving it. New research indicates that warm waters pulled up from the deep by strong winds sharply undercut glaciers from about 11,000 years ago to 7,500 years ago. This incursion then stopped until it got under way again in the 1940s. Read more
Scientists have their best view yet of the status of Antarctica's floating ice shelves and they find them to be thinning at an accelerating rate. Fernando Paolo and colleagues used 18 years of data from European radar satellites to compile their assessment. In the first half of that period, the total losses from these tongues of ice that jut out from the continent amounted to 25 cubic km per year. Read more
Antarctic ice sheet quakes shed light on ice movement and earthquakes
Analysis of small, repeating earthquakes in an Antarctic ice sheet may not only lead to an understanding of glacial movement, but may also shed light on stick slip earthquakes like those on the San Andreas fault or in Haiti, according to Penn State geoscientists. Read more
Scientists Probe Antarctic Glaciers for Clues To Past and Future Sea Level Scientists from the U.S., U.K. and Australia have teamed up to explore two of the last uncharted regions of Earth, the Aurora and Wilkes Subglacial Basins, immense ice-buried lowlands in Antarctica with a combined area the size of Mexico. The research could show how Earth's climate changed in the past and how future climate change will affect global sea level.