Science Media Centre

Researchers looking at air trapped within Antarctic ice have found humans are putting more methane into the atmosphere through fossil fuel emissions than previously thought. Using ice cores from Antarctica’s Taylor Glacier, an international team of researchers – including New Zealand and Australian scientists – measured natural rates of methane in the atmosphere over the […]

After weeks of teasing, a trillion-tonne iceberg has calved off the Larsen C ice shelf into the sea. A UK scientist who has been monitoring the ice shelf cautioned that it was too early to blame the calving of the ice shelf to human-generated climate change, and the event “may simply be a rare but natural occurrence”. […]

With the summer season kicking off, it’s not all BBQs and beaches: many scientists are heading south for the Antarctic research season. As Kiwi scientists head to the ice, they’ve featured in New Zealand media – especially given astronaut Buzz Aldrin’s emergency evacuation from the South Pole to Christchurch, where he is recuperating from symptoms […]

At its annual meeting in Hobart last week, the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) unanimously agreed to a proposal from New Zealand and the United States to establish a marine protected area in Antarctica’s Ross Sea. The protected area would cover roughly 1.55 million square kilometres, including 1.12 million km2 […]

Hundreds of metres of solid ice were lost from West Antarctica’s glaciers between 2002 and 2009, according to a US-led study published today in Nature Communications. Warm ocean waters beneath ice shelves are linked to melting the ice from below, but the effect is difficult to measure. Using data collected from a NASA airborne study, […]

Buried in sediment under an ancient crater lake in Central Otago, fossilised leaves have helped Kiwi researchers find the long-term effects of increasing CO2 levels on melting Antarctic ice. Preserved in sediment containing no oxygen to aid decomposition, the sediment cores were essentially stacked annual layers similar to tree ring or ice cores. Studying the […]

Antarctica’s large land-based ice sheets may be more vulnerable to increasing global temperatures than previously thought, according to new research from New Zealand, US and European scientists. Analysing drill cores of Antarctic rock, they found that Antarctica became its warmest ever 15 million years ago  when carbon dioxide levels were 500ppm – only slightly higher […]

Two proposals to establish Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in Antarctic waters have failed to be adopted by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) at its annual meeting in Hobart. Proposals for MPAs in the Ross Sea and the East Antarctic coastal region were discussed, but the required final consensus by […]

New modelling of Antarctic ice-sheet loss paints a grim picture of long-term sea level rise. The new paper published in Nature by researchers from New Zealand, Australia and the US, used computer simulations to estimate how Antarctica will react to different warming scenarios in the future. Although there are uncertainties in the modelling, the simulations […]

Antarctica is teeming with life, but that life needs protection, say the authors of a new review published in Nature. Recent research has revealed that the variety of life in the seemingly inhospitable Antarctic is much greater than previously thought. However the review authors – including a New Zealander – warn that without adequate protection, […]