Latest antarctic Stories
Pensoft Publishers A new peer-reviewed data paper offers a comprehensive, open-access collection of georeferenced biological information about the Antarctic macrobenthic communities. The term macrobenthic refers to the visible-for-the-eye organisms that live near or on the sea bottom such as echinoderms, sponges, ascidians, crustaceans. The paper will help in coordinating biodiversity research and conservation activities on species living near the ocean bottom of the Antarctic. The data...
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online The impact of the depleting Antarctic ozone layer on both the shifting direction of the Southern Hemisphere’s jet stream and the way in which the waters of the nearby southern oceans mix together is the topic of research published in this week’s edition of the journal Science. In one study, a team of researchers led by earth scientist Darryn W. Waugh of Johns Hopkins University wrote that the hole in the region’s ozone layer...
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Three Canadians who were reported missing last Wednesday after an emergency beacon on their plane started transmitting over Queen Alexandra Mountains in Antarctica, have been confirmed dead by the National Science Foundation (NSF) on Monday. Officials with the US Antarctic Program (USAP) and Antarctica New Zealand called off their search-and-rescue efforts on Monday, saying the crash wreckage was in a perilous position on a steep...
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Three Canadians who were aboard a small plane flying over the Antarctic are presumably missing after an emergency locator started transmitting a signal Wednesday night. Matters were complicated when bad weather forced a search and rescue mission to go on hold. The flight was going from the US-operated McMurdo Station near the South Pole to Zucchelli Station, an Italian research base in Terra Nova Bay. The emergency locator began...
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Three bottles of 100-year-old whisky that had been discovered under the floorboards of Ernest Shackleton’s abandoned expedition base in Antarctica were handed over to officials at Scott Base in New Zealand on Saturday, as they continue their journey back to the remote cabin where they were originally found. According to Sky News Australia, the bottles in question contained Scotch donated to Shackleton’s British Antarctic...
Alan McStravick for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online The uncertainty of future sea level rise is getting a little clearer thanks to research being conducted by a team comprised of scientists from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the Alfred Wegner Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) and the University of Tromsø. Their study, entitled ‘Grounding-line retreat of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet from inner Pine Island Bay’, is being published in this month’s edition of...
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Ranulph “Ran” Fiennes, dubbed by Guinness as “the world’s greatest living explorer,” set sail today for the Antarctic, leading a team of adventurers who want to be the first to cross the vast continent during winter. Fiennes has described the expedition as a trip into the unknown with no chance of rescue if the trek goes awry. Fiennes and crew left Cape Town, South Africa early Monday, cheered off by spectators and a...
National Science Foundation Drilling-related breakthroughs funded by NSF expected to advance "frontier science" in a variety of disciplines Three very large-scale, National Science Foundation-funded Antarctic science projects--investigating scientifically significant subjects as varied as life in extreme ecosystems, the fate of one of the world's largest ice sheets and the nature of abrupt global climate-change events--have recently each reached important technological milestones that...
NEWTON, Australia, Dec. 13, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Codan Radio Communications, a division of Codan Limited (ASX: CDA), announced that its high-frequency radios have been selected for transmissions during the first ever attempt to cross the Antarctic continent during the polar winter. Led by Sir Ranulph Fiennes, 'the world's greatest living explorer,' (Guinness World Records), the expedition will begin in March 2013. Throughout the time on the traverse, the expedition team on the ice and...
[Watch Video: Tractor Train From Union Glacier To Lake Ellsworth] Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Update (Dec. 22, 2012) A long-awaited project to drill through Antarctica’s ice sheet to a deep subglacial lake to look for life has been on hold for the past week due to a malfunction in the drill’s boiler system. The team heading the $12 million operation could only sit patiently in the subzero temperatures of the southern continent as they waited for a...
Latest antarctic Reference Libraries
Antarctica is the Earths southernmost continent; it contains the geographic South Pole. It’s situated in the Antarctic area of the Southern Hemisphere, almost completely south of the Antarctic Circle, and is bordered by the Southern Ocean. It’s the fifth-largest continent at 5.4 million sq miles. On average, it is the driest, coldest, and windiest continent as well as having the highest average elevation of all the continents. Considered a desert, the annual precipitation is only 8...
The Weddell seal (Leptonychotes weddellii) is a large true seal in the Lobodontini tribe. It is native to Antarctica, with its range consisting of a large “ring” that surrounds Antarctica. This seal will spend most of its time in the water instead of on land. The Weddell seal appears on the IUCN Red List with a conservation status of “Least Concern”. It is estimated this seal numbers over 800,000 individuals in the wild. First discovered in 1820s by a British sealing captain...
The crabeater seal (Lobodon carcinophagus) is a true seal that can be found around the whole of Antarctica. Its range also includes small areas in South America, New Zealand, Africa, and Australia. It resides on the pack ice zone for the entire year, even as it shifts seasonally, and prefers to stay in the continental shelf area in water with a depth of less than 1,968 feet. Because the populations are so wide spread and are sufficiently mixed, there have been no subspecies found. Because...
The subantarctic fur seal (Arctocephalus tropicalis) was described by John Edward Gray, in 1872, when he recovered an individual from Australia, and this was the cause of the improper name of tropicalis. This seal can be found mainly in southern areas of the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean. It has a wide range, but prefers to breed in areas that are more northern than the Antarctic fur seal, as its name indicates. Gough Island located in the South Atlantic and Ile Amsterdam located in the...
The Antarctic Sea Urchin (Sterechinus neumayeri), is a species of sea urchin in the family Echinidae. It is found in the Antarctic Ocean living on the seafloor. It is common around the circumpolar waters, including the Balleny Islands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Terra Nova Bay, and Victoria Land. It is found at depths of about 820 feet. The colors of this species range from bright red to dull purple and can grow to 2 inches in diameter. The test (shell) is globular with...
