Latest Southern Ocean Stories

Scientists have been frustrated for years when trying to study the ocean around Antarctica in winter. The bitter cold, floating sea ice, and whipping winds in the Southern Ocean make collecting data a difficult task. Scientists now have a solution: use seals.Researchers led by Jean-Benoit Charrassin of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris recruited help from residents in the Antarctic.Electronic data-collecting equipment was glued to 58 elephant seals in the region.  The seals...

By Ayash, Tarek Gong, Sunling; Jia, Charles Q ABSTRACT Sea salt aerosols play a dual role in affecting the atmospheric radiative balance. Directly, sea salt particles scatter the incoming solar radiation and absorb the outgoing terrestrial radiation. By acting as cloud condensation nuclei, sea salt aerosols indirectly modulate the atmospheric radiative budget through their effective contribution to cloud formation. Using the Canadian Aerosol Module (CAM)-Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling...

While studying eight Macquarie Ridge sea mountains scientists have discovered millions of starfish capturing food.The team of 19 marine scientists spotted the phenomenon while studying the region, which spans 875 miles from south of New Zealand toward Antarctica and is home to several underwater volcanoes.They had expected to discover the affects of global climate change while investigating the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, but the focus of the expedition became the underwater cameras'...

Recent additions to the premier collection of Southern Ocean sediment cores at Florida State University's Antarctic Marine Geology Research Facility will give international scientists a close-up look at fluctuations that occurred in Antarctica's ice sheet and marine and terrestrial life as the climate cooled considerably between 20 and 14 million years ago.FSU's latest Antarctic sediment core acquisition was extracted from deep beneath the sea floor of Antarctica's western Ross Sea, the...

RV Polarstern finished first Antarctic field season within the International Polar YearThe Antarctic deep sea gets colder, which might stimulate the circulation of the oceanic water masses. This is the first result of the Polarstern expedition of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association that has just ended in Punta Arenas/Chile. At the same time satellite images from the Antarctic summer have shown the largest sea-ice extent on record. In the...

High winds and big waves are part of the data -- and the challengeScientists will embark this week from Punta Arenas, Chile, on the tip of South America, to spend 42 days amid the high winds and waves of the Southern Ocean. Here they hope to make groundbreaking measurements to explain how huge fluxes of climate-affecting gases move between atmosphere and sea, and vice-versa.The cruise, which departs Feb. 28, should provide important information on how the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide moves...

WASHINGTON - More than 30 scientists will embark next week on a research mission to the Southern Ocean. Researchers will battle the elements to study how gases important to climate change move between the atmosphere and the ocean under high winds and seas. NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the National Science Foundation are sponsoring the Southern Ocean Gas Exchange Experiment, a six-week research expedition aboard the NOAA ship Ronald H. Brown, departing...

Scientists have discovered giant sea creatures in Antarctic waters while conducting a census of sea life to determine the impact of environmental change.The census, known as the Collaborative East Antarctic Marine Census (CEAMARC), consists of three ships: the Aurora Australis, France's L'Astrolabe and Japan's Umitaka Maru.The expedition to the Southern Ocean took them more than 1,000 meters below the surface to the ocean floor."Gigantism is very common in Antarctic waters -- we have...

Frozen in time"¦ frozen in place"¦ frozen solid"¦ All of these phrases have been used to describe Antarctica, and yet they all belie the truth about this southerly point on the globe. Although the area is covered in ice and bears witness to some of the most extreme cold on the planet, this ecosystem is dynamic, not static, and change here has always been dramatic and intense. A report published in the March issue of Ecology argues that the extreme cold and environmental conditions of past...

Federal research minister aboard the research icebreaker PolarsternIn the Southern Ocean, large quantities of surface-drifting plankton algae are able to significantly reduce the carbon dioxide content of the surface waters, which can affect the global carbon dioxide cycle. This is one of the results from an Antarctic expedition which has just drawn to a close in Cape Town on February 4, and which was led by the Alfred Wegener Institute, part of the Helmholtz Association. On February 5, an...