CR
Cryospheric Sciences

Antarctic

Dreaming & reading about fieldwork – summer blog break 2024

July 29, 2024
A person is kneeling down at a brown pond, all covered in mosquito net, waterproof gear, kitchen gloves and a pancake flipping spatula.
Maria during an Arctic Microbiomes PhD Summer school in Nunavut, Canada. Yes, sometimes, kitchen utensils help you stay away from mosquitos and discover some amazing bacterial mats (you can find them in your non-Arctic ponds, as well! (Photo Credit: Pascal Paradis)

  As we are starting into our annual blog summer break, we reflect on what summer can mean for polar researchers (including some fieldwork saudades). As an Arctic or Alpine cryo-scientist, chances are that you are somewhere in between vacation, fieldwork or trying to work through data while everyone else is free. If you, like us, did not have your vacation yet or do not have any fieldwork com ...[Read More]

You thought it was over? Here’s more on the 2023 Antarctic sea-ice extent record low

and April 26, 2024
A figure showing several lines for several years of sea ice extent. They look like a wave with the minimum around february each year and the maximum around october.
Figure 1: Daily cycle of the Antarctic sea-ice extent (in million km²) for separate years featuring record lows (2017, 2022, 2023, 2024) and a record high (2014), and for the average over the 1979-2014 period. The blue shading indicates the interannual variability (2 standard deviations) around the 1979-2014 mean [Credit: D. Docquier, based on the OSI SAF sea-ice index, last access: 24/04/2024]. The map in the lower right corner shows the Antarctic Ice Sheet, as well as Antarctic sea ice surrounding it, in September 2005 [Credit: Wikimedia Commons, NASA Earth Observatory].

  In November last year (see this post), we promised to provide you an update of what happened with Antarctic sea ice during the year 2023 – a year of an exceptionally low extent. In this post, we try our best to discuss the conditions that lead to (part of) the recent loss in Antarctic sea ice, including atmospheric and ocean processes. How sea ice usually works… One of the ways scientists h ...[Read More]

Give your ears a holiday treat: our favourite polar podcasts

December 18, 2023
Give your ears a holiday treat: our favourite polar podcasts
Enjoy the holiday season with some really cool polar podcasts [Image credit: David Satterlee from Pixabay].

December is a busy month, and while we are busy preparing gifts and a mindful attitude for the festive season, finishing up projects for the year, at some point, we close the laptop and take our ride of choice home. So as a little treat for your ears, we found some 8 (+1) polar podcasts for those in need of a little inspiration. The podcasts are tackled from points of natural science, policy, hist ...[Read More]

An exceptional year: What’s up with Antarctic sea ice?

November 17, 2023
An exceptional year: What’s up with Antarctic sea ice?
Figure 1: Daily cycle of the Antarctic sea-ice extent (in million km²) for each 10-year period between 1979 and 2018 (10-year averages) and for 3 separate years, including 2023 (red curve). Snapshot of 12 November 2023 [Credit: NASA., Comiso et al., “Current State of Sea Ice Cover”, see: https://earth.gsfc.nasa.gov/cryo/data/current-state-sea-ice-cover].

In our blog, we have written a lot about Arctic sea ice (see this post, this post and this post for recent examples). Much less has been written about Antarctic sea ice, i.e. its southern counterpart. That is not surprising as Arctic sea ice has experienced major losses since the late 1970s (beginning of satellite observations), while not much had happened to Antarctic sea ice (despite a small exp ...[Read More]

The search for the Antarctic giants!

October 13, 2023
The search for the Antarctic giants!
The Southern Ocean, a place of wonders and giants. At the surface we are amazed by giant icebergs, but it is in the deep that the true mystery persists! [Credits: José Queirós]

The deep Southern Ocean is full of giants! Some of them scared the sailors for centuries, like the colossal squid or, as they called it, The Kraken. They thought it was a huge monster capable of sinking ships! Far from it, these giants ran away from us, and we still know very little about them! They live in depths where the light cannot penetrate, the largest ecosystem on Earth, the Deep-Sea! They ...[Read More]

Some icy summer reads – the blog goes on holiday

July 14, 2023
A photo of a sunset over Arctic sea ice and a photo of yellow safety rubber shoes facing that sea.

The cryosphere blog is taking a summer break but not without first providing you with your beach/airplane/train/fieldwork/balcony summer reading list to make you miss us a tiny bit less. Continue reading this post to explore some summer inspiration. Like a lot of northern countries who take long summer breaks to enjoy the long hours of light (midnight sun) after a dark winter, the Cryoblog is also ...[Read More]

A little guide to find your way through the Cryo-Jungle?

November 4, 2022
A little guide to find your way through the Cryo-Jungle?

Are you starting your studies in cryospheric sciences, or are coming into our field from another subject? If so, you may have unsuspectingly waded into a (very thick) soup of acronyms! Don’t fret–here is your “one stop shop” that tells you where to look for more information! Early Career Organisations Unless you’re fortunate enough to be working in a polar-oriented institute (some of our previous ...[Read More]

Did you know the differences between Arctic and Antarctic sea ice?

October 14, 2022
Did you know the differences between Arctic and Antarctic sea ice?
Figure 1: Satellite observations of (top) Arctic and (bottom) Antarctic sea-ice concentration in (left) March 2020 and (right) September 2020. [Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center, University of Colorado, https://nsidc.org/home].

If you look at the maps in Figure 1, you will quickly see that sea ice is present in both polar regions (Arctic at the top, Antarctic at the bottom). Despite this apparent similarity, some differences exist between Arctic (in the Northern Hemisphere) and Antarctic (in the Southern Hemisphere) sea ice. We provide a brief explanation of two key differences in this post. Geography The first main diff ...[Read More]

The Polar Amplifier

December 17, 2021
The Polar Amplifier
Drip, drip, drop of the melting sea ice. Figure [Maria Scheel, imaggeo.egu.eu]

It’s no secret that the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the planet, but why? Polar Amplification (often called Arctic Amplification) is the mechanism at play. In this week’s blog, we find out about its origins and why it happens. Early Discoveries In 1969, Russian scientist Mikhail Budyko and US scientist William Sellers discovered independently that the increase in greenhouse gases comb ...[Read More]

Women of Cryo IV: Virginia ‘Ginny’ Fiennes (1947 – 2004)

October 1, 2021
Women of Cryo IV: Virginia ‘Ginny’ Fiennes (1947 – 2004)

Women make up 50.8% of the worlds population, yet fewer than 30% of the world’s researchers are women. Of this percentage, BAME (Black Asia and Minority Ethnic) comprise around 5%, with less than 1% represented in geoscience faculty positions. The divide between women in the population and women in STEM needs to be addressed. Through a series of blog posts we hope to raise the voice of women in th ...[Read More]