Latest West Antarctica Stories

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...

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The West Antarctica ice sheet is melting faster than expected. An international group of oceanographers led by the University of Gothenburg has published new observations in the journal Nature Geoscience that may improve our ability to predict future changes in ice sheet mass. The water levels of the oceans would be affected globally by a reduction of the ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland, making it problematic that...

NASA's Operation IceBridge got the 2012 Antarctic campaign off to a productive start with a land ice survey of Thwaites Glacier and a sea ice flight over parts of the Bellingshausen Sea. During the first few weeks of a campaign, IceBridge typically concentrates on sea ice before it begins to melt as spring temperatures rise, but as often happens in the field, the weather had other ideas. On Oct. 12, the IceBridge team met with meteorologists at the Punta Arenas airport to discuss...

[ Watch the Video ] A new study examining nearly 40 years of satellite imagery has revealed that the floating ice shelves of a critical portion of West Antarctica are steadily losing their grip on adjacent bay walls, potentially amplifying an already accelerating loss of ice to the sea. The most extensive record yet of the evolution of the floating ice shelves in the eastern Amundsen Sea Embayment in West Antarctica shows that their margins, where they grip onto rocky bay walls or...

[ Watch the Video ] In October 2011, researchers flying in NASA’s Operation IceBridge campaign made the first-ever detailed, airborne measurements of a major iceberg calving event while it was in progress. Four months later, the IceBridge team has mapped the crack in Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier in a way that allows glaciologists and the rest of us to fly through the icy canyon. The above image is a still frame captured from a three-dimensional, virtual flight through the new...

[ Watch the Video ] Breathtaking images taken from outer-space by NASA's Operation IceBridge -- the largest airborne survey of Earth's polar ice ever flown -- reveal a 19-mile long, 195 ft.-deep crack across a floating ice shelf in Antarctica that could produce the world’s largest iceberg. The rift was first discovered last October, but IceBridge scientists returned soon after to obtain the first-ever detailed airborne measurements of the 310 square mile iceberg calving in progress....

Accelerated melting of two fast-moving outlet glaciers that drain Antarctic ice into the Amundsen Sea Embayment is likely the result, in part, of an increase in sea-surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean, according to new University of Washington research. Higher-than-normal sea-level pressure north of the Amundsen Sea sets up westerly winds that push surface water away from the glaciers and allow warmer deep water to rise to the surface under the edges of the glaciers, said...

[ Watch the Video ] An international team of researchers funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF) will travel next month to one of Antarctica's most active, remote and harsh spots to determine how changes in the waters circulating under an active ice sheet are causing a glacier to accelerate and drain into the sea. The science expedition will be the most extensive ever deployed to Pine Island Glacier. It is the area of the ice-covered continent that concerns scientists...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 9, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- An international team of researchers funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF) will travel next month to one of Antarctica's most active, remote and harsh spots to determine how changes in the waters circulating under an active ice sheet are causing a glacier to accelerate and drain into the sea. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The science expedition will be the most extensive ever deployed to...

[ Watch the Video ] After discovering an emerging crack that cuts across the floating ice shelf of Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica, NASA's Operation IceBridge has flown a follow-up mission and made the first-ever detailed airborne measurements of a major iceberg calving in progress. NASA's Operation Ice Bridge, the largest airborne survey of Earth's polar ice ever flown, is in the midst of its third field campaign from Punta Arenas, Chile. The six-year mission will yield an...