A team of British climate scientists comparing today’s environment with the warm period before the last ice age has discovered a 65% reduction of Antarctic sea ice around 128,000 years ago. The finding is an important contribution towards the challenge of making robust predictions about the Earth’s future climate.
The rapid warming of the Antarctic Peninsula, which occurred from the early-1950s to the late 1990s, has paused. Stabilisation of the ozone hole along with natural climate variability were significant in bringing about the change. Together these influences have now caused the peninsula to enter a temporary cooling phase. Temperatures remain higher than measured during the middle of the 20th Century and glacial retreat is still taking place.
Levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere – which is the leading driver of recent climate change – have reached a milestone at British Antarctic Survey’s (BAS) Halley Research Station in Antarctica. Scientists from BAS and University of East Anglia (UEA) working at the station’s Clean Air Sector Laboratory (CASLab), recorded 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time this month (June).
The research vessel Neil Armstrong was met by a jubilant crowd at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) dock Wednesday, as it arrived to its home port for the first time, escorted by the WHOI coastal research vessel R/V Tioga, two Coast Guard boats and fireboats from neighboring towns.
22 March 2016/Kiel. Extinct volcanic islands erode to sea level and then disappear below the surface. In the course of millions of years, movements of tectonic plates and geological faults can transport these seamounts far from where they originally formed. Research led by volcanologists at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel has shown that three seamounts in the South Atlantic Ocean located more than 3,500 kilometers apart once formed a single ocean island volcano. The findings also provide insight into the complex plate tectonics of the region.