Cryospheric Sciences

Image of the Week – A Hole-y Occurrence, the reappearance of the Weddell Polynya

Rebecca Frew March 2, 2018

Fig. 1: The Weddell polynya as seen in the 7th September 2017. The size is around 2500 km². Black areas are sea-ice free (open water) [Credit: NASA].

REMARK: If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, please make sure you’ve voted for it in EGU blog competition (2nd choice in the list)! During both the austral winters of 2016 and 2017, a famous feature of the Antarctic sea-ice cover was observed once again, 40 years after its first observed occurrence: the Weddell Polynya! The sea-ice cover exhibited a huge hole (of around 2600 km2 up to ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – Vibrating Ice Shelf!

Emma C. Smith December 22, 2017

Fig. 1: Geophones in the evening on the Ekström Ice Shelf, Antarctica. These devices are used to record seismic waves that are sent into the ice and bound back [Credit: Emma Smith]

If you listen carefully to the Ekström ice shelf in Antarctica, a strange sound can be heard! The sound of a vibrating truck sending sounds waves into the ice. These sound waves are used to “look” through the ice and create a seismic profile of what lies beneath the ice surface. Read on to find out how the technique works and for a special Cryosphere Christmas message! What are we doing with this ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – Understanding Antarctic Sea Ice Expansion

Rebecca Frew December 15, 2017

Sea ice is an extremely sensitive indicator of climate change. Arctic sea ice has been dubbed ‘the canary in the coal mine’, due to the observed steady decline in the summer sea ice extent in response to global warming over recent decades (see this and this previous posts). However, the story has not been mirrored at the other pole. As shown in our image of the week (blue line in Fig. 1), Antarcti ...[Read More]

Image of the Week — Climate change and disappearing ice

Sophie Berger November 10, 2017

The first week of the Climate Change summit in Bonn (COP 23 for those in the know) has been marked by Syria’s decision to sign the Paris Accord, the international agreement that aims at tackling climate change. This decision means that the United States would become the only country outside the agreement if it were to complete the withdrawal process vowed by President Trump. In this context ...[Read More]

Back to the Front – Larsen C Ice Shelf in the Aftermath of Iceberg A68!

Adam Booth November 8, 2017

Figure 1: A68 sets sail from Larsen C.
Sentinel 1 SAR image [Credit: Adrian Luckman, Swansea University].

Much of the Antarctic continent is fringed by ice shelves. An ice shelf is the floating extension of a terrestrial ice mass and, as such, is an important ‘middleman’ that regulates the delivery of ice from land into the ocean: for much of Antarctica, ice that passes from land into the sea does so via ice shelves. I’ve been conducting geophysical experiments on ice for over a decade, using mostly s ...[Read More]

Mapping the bottom of the world — an Interview with Brad Herried, Antarctic Cartographer

Brad Herried October 11, 2017

Brad Herried, Antarctic cartographer at South Pole. [Credit: Brad Herried].

Mapping Earth’s most remote continent presents a number of unique challenges. Antarctic cartographers and scientists are using some of the most advanced mapping technologies available to get a clearer picture of the continent. We asked Brad Herried, a Cartographer and Web Developer at the Polar Geospatial Center at the University of Minnesota, a few questions about what it’s like to do this unique ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – See sea ice from 1901!

Emma C. Smith August 18, 2017

Aerial photograph of the German explorer Erich von Drygalski’s ship, making its way through Antarctic sea ice. This picture was obtained from a hot air balloon in 1901. The log books of this ship were used to study sea-ice conditions at the turn of the century in the Antarctic. [Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/Department of Commerce]

The EGU Cryosphere blog has reported on several studies of Antarctic sea ice (for example, here and here) made from high-tech satellites, but these records only extend back to the 1970s, when the satellite records began. Is it possible to work out what sea ice conditions were like before this time? The short answer is YES…or this would be a very boring blog post! Read on to find out how hero ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – A new way to compute ice dynamic changes

David Docquier August 4, 2017

Up to now, ice sheet mass changes due to ice dynamics have been computed from satellite observations that suffer from sparse coverage in time and space. A new method allows us to compute these changes on much wider temporal and spatial scales. But how does this method work? Let us discover the different steps by having a look at Enderby Land in East Antarctica, for which ice velocities are shown i ...[Read More]

Image of the Week — High altitudes slow down Antarctica’s warming

Sophie Berger July 7, 2017

When it comes to climate change, the Arctic and the Antarctic are poles apart. At the north of the planet, temperatures are increasing twice as fast as in the rest of the globe, while warming in Antarctica has been milder. A recent study published in Earth System Dynamics shows that the high elevation of Antarctica might help explain why the two poles are warming at diﬀerent speeds. The Arctic vs ...[Read More]

Image of the Week – The birth of a sea-ice dragon!

Kevin Bulthuis June 30, 2017

Fig. 1: Dragon-skin ice observation in Terra Nova Bay by the Nathan B Palmer research team in April 2017. [Credit: IMAS ].

Dragon-skin ice may sound like the name of an episode of the Game of Thrones fantasy franchise. However, this fantasy name hides a rare and bizarre type of ice formation that you can see in our Image of the Week. It has been recently observed by the “Polynyas, ice production and seasonal evolution in the Ross Sea” (PIPERS) research team in Antarctica. This bizarre phenomenon caused by ...[Read More]