Over the past decade, horizon scanning has become one of the most influential tools used by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) to identify the questions that matter most for the future of Antarctic and Southern Ocean science.

For centuries, one of the most influential geographic ideas about the southern hemisphere rested on remarkably thin evidence. Claudius Ptolemy’s world map, based on knowledge compiled in the second century AD and revived during the Renaissance, depicted the Indian Ocean as a vast enclosed sea, bounded to the south by an unknown landmass.

At China’s Zhongshan Station in East Antarctica, aircraft operating during the 2025-26 season relied on a carefully prepared strip of compacted snow marked by flags and governed by constantly changing weather conditions.

Winter storms in the southern Ross Sea are becoming more frequent and more intense, according to new research from the University of Otago, with implications that extend well beyond meteorology. The findings suggest that changing storm patterns are already affecting sea-ice conditions that underpin scientific operations in one of Antarctica's most important research regions.

A major new study has produced the most comprehensive inventory yet of volcanoes concealed beneath Antarctica's ice sheet, providing researchers with an important new tool for understanding how geological processes may influence the future behaviour of the Antarctic Ice Sheet.

On 17 January 1773, the two ships became the first known vessels to cross the Antarctic Circle. Commanded by James Cook and Tobias Furneaux, the expedition was searching for the supposed southern continent, but what the sailors encountered instead was a vast, hostile seascape of fog, ice and bitter cold