September 18, 2026
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
September 18, 2026
Antarctica is synonymous with ice today, but during the Late Cretaceous, around 90 million years ago, the continent looked dramatically different. New research led by scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute has revealed that wildfires regularly burned in forests growing close to the South Pole, making them the southernmost known wildfires ever identified on Earth.
September 18, 2026
The most comprehensive assessment yet of changes in the world's polar ice sheets, led by researchers from Northumbria University and supported by NASA, combined evidence from 42 independent satellite surveys spanning more than five decades. The findings show that the two ice sheets lost an estimated 11,309 billion tonnes of ice between 1979 and 2023.
The waters surrounding the South Orkney Islands have emerged as an important hotspot for recovering whale populations, prompting Antarctic tour operators to introduce a new vessel-speed restriction aimed at reducing the risk of ship strikes.
The Mackenzie Polynya, an area of open water or thin ice that persists within the surrounding winter sea-ice pack, forms in Prydz Bay. Although they may appear to be small gaps in the Antarctic sea-ice cover, polynyas play an outsized role in the Southern Ocean system. They are major sites of sea-ice formation, contributing to the production of dense, cold water that helps drive global ocean circulation.
Hidden beneath nearly four kilometres of Antarctic ice, Lake Vostok is one of the planet’s most extraordinary scientific targets. Isolated from the atmosphere for millions of years, the vast subglacial lake may preserve a unique record of Antarctica’s environmental history in the sediments that lie on its floor.
This annual seasonal transition highlights a growing trend in polar science: the increasing role of autonomous technologies in collecting data from regions where year-round human occupation is costly and difficult. Instruments left behind can continue monitoring atmospheric conditions, glaciological processes and other environmental variables long after field teams have returned home.
September 08, 2026
When most people think about ocean carbon uptake, they picture microscopic plants near the sea surface using sunlight to convert carbon dioxide into organic matter through photosynthesis. However, new research suggests that microorganisms living deep beneath the Ross Sea are helping to capture carbon in complete darkness.
September 08, 2026
During the 2025-26 Antarctic summer season, the international IceCube collaboration completed a major upgrade of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole. The new equipment is expected to improve the observatory’s ability to detect low-energy neutrinos, elusive particles that can travel across the cosmos largely unaffected by matter.
September 08, 2026
The Antarctic Circumpolar Current is often described as the world's most powerful ocean current, flowing uninterrupted around Antarctica. According to new research, this defining feature of the Southern Ocean did not emerge in the straightforward way scientists once imagined.
September 06, 2026
Scientists in Australia are unlocking atmospheric secrets preserved deep within Antarctic ice, refining techniques that could eventually reveal how Earth's climate behaved more than one million years ago.
September 06, 2026
One of the most significant achievements of the First French Antarctic Expedition was the systematic survey of the western Antarctic Peninsula, including parts of Graham Land and the Palmer Archipelago.
September 06, 2026
The Antarctic coast is far more than the continent’s outer edge. It is a dynamic region where grounded ice, floating ice shelves, ocean waters, the atmosphere and the underlying geology interact. Changes in this narrow zone can influence how quickly ice flows into the ocean and, ultimately, how much Antarctica contributes to global sea level rise.