Antarctica News

Climate change is happening and humans are causing it, primarily from the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide caused by burning fossil fuels. This much we know. The "secret" comes from…

Two hundred years from now, the planet could look very different. This week two landmark studies revealed that West Antarctica's ice sheet is in a state of seemingly inevitable collapse…

Conservation groups were jubilant in response to last month's ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) banning Japan's long-standing "research" whaling practices in the Antarctic. However, the celebrations proved…

Japan has harvested thousands of whales in North Pacific and Antarctic waters since the implementation of a global ban on whaling, eliciting harsh criticism from the international community. Now, in…

Human-caused climate change is altering the habitat of Adélie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae). In an article recently published in PLOS ONE, a team of researchers led by Amélie Lescroël from the…

Sea anemones are supposed to sit on the bottom of the ocean, using their basal disc (or adhesive foot) to rest on a coral reef or sand. So, imagine the…

Resting near the bottom of the food chain, Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) underpin much of the Southern Ocean's ecosystem. But in a rapidly warming world, these hugely-abundant crustaceans could see…

A team on South Georgia has successfully completed the world's largest rodent eradication in an effort to rid the British territory of millions of rats and mice. Against the backdrop…

As the most pristine marine ecosystem on the planet, Antarctica's Ross Sea has become dubbed the world's "last ocean." Home to an abundance of penguins, whales, orcas, seals, and massive…

From 1971 to 2000, the world's land areas were the warmest they have been in at least 1,400 years, according to a new study in Nature Geoscience. The massive new…

Top: a map of Antarctica showing the extent of surface melting in January 2005 observed from space. Bottom: Time series of mean January temperature at Byrd Station from 1957 to…

Over the course of several years, turbulent water overflow from a large melt lake carved this 60-foot deep canyon. Note the people for scale. Photo by: Ian Joughin. A massive…

This post is an expanded version of an article that appeared in August on Yale e360: Easing The Collateral Damage Fisheries Inflict on Seabirds.

This was the image Paul had been so hoping to get: a sunlit mass of emperor penguins charging upwards, leaving in their wake a crisscross of bubble trails. The location…

Adelie penguins hunting for food. Photo by: J. Weller. Click to enlarge. Pablo Garcia Borboroglu will be speaking at the Wildlife Conservation Network Expo in San Francisco on October 13th,…

Tropical vegetation grew along the coast of Antarctica 52 million years ago, an indication to dramatic climate shifts linked to elevated carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, report scientists in…

Humpback whale. Photo by Rhett A. Butler Humpback whales in the Antarctic are delaying their migration to feed on krill that are staying later due to reduced extent of sea…

Field camp on Ferrigno Ice Stream. Courtesy of the University of Aberdeen British researchers have discovered a one mile deep rift valley hidden beneath the icy surface of West Antarctica,…

Satellite images show twice as many emperor penguins as previously thought Map showing the locations of Emperor penguin colonies in Antarctica. Graphic courtesy of the British Antarctic Survey, whose scientists…

Antarctica: Ross Island in the Ross Sea. Photo by: Bigstock. The Ross Sea, a massive bay off Antarctica, has been dubbed the world's last ocean due to its pristine state,…

This article is available for a limited time on mongabay.com. It has also been published in a book by mongabay journalist, Jeremy Hance: Life is Good: Conservation in an Age…

The Cryosphere by Dr. Shawn J. Marshall, Canada Research Chair in Climate Change, University of Calgary, is an excellent book because it summarizes leading scientific research into easily accessible chapters…

Hugh Powell "iPhoniscoping" snow petrels in Antarctica. Photo by: Chris Linder. Hugh Powell is science editor at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology as well as a contributor to Woods Hole…

A new species of Yeti crabs cover nearly every inch of the "lost world" of deep sea Antarctic hydrothermal vents. Photo by: Oxford University. Click to enlarge. Scientists have discovered…

Discovery Channel has announced that it will, in fact, air the last episode of the new series Frozen Planet, which focuses solely on the impact of climate change at the…

The new series Frozen Planet, by the creators of the super-popular and universally-acclaimed Planet Earth, details the wildlife and changing nature of the world's poles: the Antarctic and the Arctic.…

Chinstrap penguin chick. Photo by: Julie Larsen Maher. A new blog, dubbed the Real Chicks of Central Park, is allowing visitors an intimate look at eight impossibly-cute penguin chicks. Including…

Giant crab invasion looms in Antarctica Dangerous and disruptive king crabs lurk in a deep pocket of the Antarctic continental shelf, clamoring to escape their cold-water prison to reach and…

A new report finds that the oceans are facing a mass extinction. One day many of the world's marine species may only be found in aquariums, if at all, such…

Chinstrap penguins. Photo by: NOAA/Mike Goebel. . Climate change has hit species of Antarctic penguins by causing a staggering decline in their prey: krill. A new study in the Proceedings…