Antarctica, features and articles | Educational Science

Oct 1, 2019

'Loose Tooth' Iceberg Calves Off East Antarctica in Surprising Spot

An enormous iceberg that had been hanging onto Antarctica's Amery Ice Shelf by a thread has broken free, though not precisely where scientists had expected it to rift. The iceberg broke off the East Antarctic ice shelf on Sept. 26, ending a waiting game that had been going on for...

Oct 10, 2019

'Upside-Down Rivers' of Warm Water Are Carving Antarctica to Pieces

Earth's frozen places are losing ground fast. In Antarctica, melted ice spills into the ocean at rate of about 155 billion tons (140 billion metric tons) per year — an amount so confoundingly huge that it's easier just to call it chilling and unprecedented, as a recent U.N. report did....

Oct 22, 2019

Endangered Antarctic Glacier Could Soon Calve a Massive New Iceberg

Two cracks are growing in western Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier, and they are an ominous warning that major ice loss is on the way. This isn't the first major ice loss in recent years. Nearly a year ago, on Oct. 29, 2018, an iceberg measuring approximately 116 square miles (300...

Oct 22, 2019

Ozone Hole Over Antarctica Shrinks to Record-Small Size

The ozone hole above Antarctica, where the sun's harmful ultraviolet (UV) rays bust through an otherwise sunscreened stratosphere, has shrunk to its smallest size on record going back to 1982, scientists have found. Typically, at this time of year, the hole in the ozone — a layer made up of...

Dec 13, 2019

Scientists Found the Deepest Land on Earth Hiding Beneath Antarctica's Ice

A new map of the mountains, valleys and canyons hidden under Antarctica's ice has revealed the deepest land on Earth, and will help forecast future ice loss. The frozen southern continent can look pretty flat and featureless from above. But beneath the ice pack that's accumulated over the eons, there's...

Dec 26, 2019

16 Times Antarctica Revealed Its Awesomeness in 2019

The southernmost continent is an awesome place, in the old-fashioned sense of the word. Precipitous mountains, grinding glaciers and icebergs of every configuration, and a surprising range of colors make up Antarctica's wondrous landscape. And because the continent is so remote and foreboding, much of this landscape remains unknown. With...

Jan 13, 2020

Scientists Are Racing to Figure Out Why This Giant Glacier in Antarctica Is Melting So Fast

A robotic submarine is about to descend into a dark, water-filled cavern in Antarctica, to try to find out why one of the continent's largest glaciers is melting so fast. In the next few days, scientists will lower the torpedo-shaped robot, dubbed Icefin, into a nearly 2,000-foot-long (600 meters) borehole...

Jan 27, 2020

Russian explorers discovered Antarctica 200 years ago. What we've learned about Earth's coldest continent.

Antarctica is the remotest part of the world, but it is a hub of scientific discovery, international diplomacy and environmental change. It was officially discovered 200 years ago, on Jan. 27, 1820, when members of a Russian expedition sighted land in what is now known as the Fimbul Ice Shelf...

Jan 30, 2020

Surprisingly warm water found on underside of Antarctica's 'Doomsday Glacier'

An underwater robot named Icefin that has gone where no submersible has gone before — to the underbelly of Antarctica's Doomsday Glacier — has uncovered unusually warm temperatures there. The hunk of ice, officially known as the Thwaites Glacier, earned its ominous nickname because it is one of Antarctica's fastest...

Feb 11, 2020

One of Antarctica's fastest-shrinking glaciers just lost an iceberg twice the size of Washington, D.C.

Pine Island Glacier, one of the fastest-shrinking glaciers in Antarctica, has just lost another huge chunk of ice to the sea, continuing a troubling trend that has become a near-annual occurrence in the last decade. Scientists at Copernicus, the European Union’s Earth observation program, have been closely monitoring the glacier...

Feb 14, 2020

Antarctica just saw its all-time hottest day ever

Antarctica just experienced its single hottest day ever recorded, hitting a high of 69.35 degrees Fahrenheit (20.75 degrees Celsius) on Feb. 9, a team of Argentine researchers reported. This is the first time the temperature on the continent has exceeded 20 degrees C (68 F), the researchers told news site...

Feb 24, 2020

See record-high temperatures strip Antarctica of huge amounts of ice

It's easy to forget that Antarctica is technically a desert, until you see it without snow. A new pair of satellite images shared by NASA's Earth Observatory makes that stark reality clear as ice. NASA's Landsat-8 satellite snapped the two images of Eagle Island (a small island off Antarctica's northwest...

Feb 26, 2020

Spooky 'blood snow' invades Antarctic island

It's summer in Antarctica, which means record-high temperatures, jarring glacial melt and — in a very metal symbol of our changing climate — a bit of blood-red snow spattered across the Antarctic Peninsula. Over the past several weeks, the ice around Ukraine's Vernadsky Research Base (located on Galindez Island, off...

Feb 28, 2020

Melting ice in Antarctica reveals new uncharted island

Pointing toward South America like an icy finger, the Antarctic Peninsula is one of the fastest-warming regions on Earth. The peninsula's two major glaciers — the Thwaites Glacier and the Pine Island Glacier — are retreating toward the mainland faster than new ice can form, chipping away at the continent's...

Mar 2, 2020

What happens when your nose grows an icicle of snot?

Check the snotsicles on this! an environment correspondent for the BBC gleefully exclaimed, in a video recently captured in frigid Antarctica. A frozen icicle of moisture, also known as a snotsicle, hung from the reporter's nose, extending all the way down to his lower lip. When temperatures fall far below...