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#antarctic — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #antarctic, aggregated by home.social.

  1. #Antarctic sea ice is nearing its annual maximum extent (austral winter). This year will not be setting any new records, though there are plenty of regional extremes as shown in August's anomaly pattern.

    + Concentration means the fraction of ice in an area
    + Graphic from zacklabe.com/antarctic-sea-ice

  2. In August 2026, the #SeaIce global extent was 7.2% below 1991-2020 mean. Since the beginning of records (1978):
    - #Arctic, 12th lowest monthly mean, with 9.1% less extent than normal (-617,526km²)
    - #Antarctic, 4th lowest monthly mean, with 6.5% less exent than normal (1,178,424km²)

    for more: osi-saf.eumetsat.int/sea-ice-i

  3. In August 2026, the #SeaIce global extent was 7.2% below 1991-2020 mean. Since the beginning of records (1978):
    - #Arctic, 12th lowest monthly mean, with 9.1% less extent than normal (-617,526km²)
    - #Antarctic, 4th lowest monthly mean, with 6.5% less exent than normal (1,178,424km²)

    for more: osi-saf.eumetsat.int/sea-ice-i

  4. In August 2026, the #SeaIce global extent was 7.2% below 1991-2020 mean. Since the beginning of records (1978):
    - #Arctic, 12th lowest monthly mean, with 9.1% less extent than normal (-617,526km²)
    - #Antarctic, 4th lowest monthly mean, with 6.5% less exent than normal (1,178,424km²)

    for more: osi-saf.eumetsat.int/sea-ice-i

  5. In August 2026, the #SeaIce global extent was 7.2% below 1991-2020 mean. Since the beginning of records (1978):
    - #Arctic, 12th lowest monthly mean, with 9.1% less extent than normal (-617,526km²)
    - #Antarctic, 4th lowest monthly mean, with 6.5% less exent than normal (1,178,424km²)

    for more: osi-saf.eumetsat.int/sea-ice-i

  6. 3-Sep-2026
    Less #UVlight may mean less carbon storage in Antarctic tundra

    The #Antarctic ozone layer is recovering, a major environmental success following the #MontrealProtocol. As the #ozone layer heals, less #ultraviolet radiation reaches the Antarctic surface—a change usually viewed as beneficial for living organisms.
    But a new field study suggests that the ecological story may be more complicated.

    eurekalert.org/news-releases/1

    #science #environment #ecology

  7. Got a very cool QSL card in today's mail. I always love when these little surprises show up!

    #HamRadio #qsl #antarctic #SouthShetland

  8. theguardian.com/environment/20. "Temperatures in the #Antarctic climbed above 15C this month, shattering the previous #winter #heat #record for the usually #frozen #region & raising concerns about the speed of #climate #breakdown. The new winter peak #temperature was logged by the #Argentinian Esperanza base on the #Trinity #peninsula on 6 June amid a protracted #heatwave, when the maximum daily temperature exceeded zero degrees for three consecutive weeks."

  9. 💁🏻‍♀️ TIL: 🧵🌐 The hairy ball #theorem says you can’t comb a #sphere smooth without a cowlick somewhere.

    The same rule explains why #Earth always has a #cyclone spinning, why #fusion reactors use #doughnut shapes, and why omnidirectional antennas can’t exist. #Wind patterns over the #Arctic and #Antarctic circles illustrate the proof.

    👉 scientificamerican.com/article

    #topology #math #weather #hurricane #nuclearfusion #tokamak #plasma #science #hair

  10. #melting #iceshelves #underseastorms #Antarctic

    Original article (paywalled, log in to your local university library to read)

    Poinelli et al. Nat. Geosci. (2025)

    Ocean submesoscales as drivers of submarine melting within Antarctic ice cavities.

    doi.org/10.1038/s41561-025-018

  11. World-first footage shows #Antarctic #seafloor scoured by #cruiseship #anchors
    Researchers claim to have world-first footage of damage to sensitive and biodiverse Antarctic sea floor ecosystems caused by anchors and chains.
    The team behind the discovery has called for tighter regulation of Antarctic anchoring practices, particularly for the growing #tourism sector.
    abc.net.au/news/science/2025-0

  12. Oh, wait, just a second...
    When AMOC hickupped during LGM or deglaciasation, global sea level was 120m lower than today.
    My musings wrt (sea) ice melt back then compared to today, and its impact on AMOC transport speed should also consider that coastal ice wasn't sea ice at all due to lower sea level.
    Dunno for sure, but continental ice could have covered the very shallow Norwegian sea all the way up to Svalbard.

    Arctic ocean also has ocean currents that somehow interact with AMOC. Sea ice formation helps driving ocean currents.
    When less area was covered by ocean, sea ice formation was less which must have influenced Arctic ocean currents, and therefor, AMOC in paleoclimate.

    Today's Arctic sea ice loss has already altered, weakened or stopped a bottom water current that goes right through the centre of the Arctic sea. Don't recall its name now, maybe starts with a T or L...?
    And wasn't Alaska also connected to Siberia, and hence no water from the Pacific entered the Arctic sea to drive currents and influence AMOC?
    Anyway, whether or not any Arctic ocean currents existed during LGM or deglaciasation, when sea ice formation was greatly reduced all around the Arctic coast, is also something to bear in mind when comparing the causes of a tipping paleo AMOC with the causes of the tipping potential of an #EconObscene AMOC.

    Antarctic sea ice formation wouldn't have been reduced from lower sea level, tho. Not impeded by <surrounding> land area, it just formed further out. That's all.

    #paleoclimate #LGM #AMOC #seaice #Arctic #Antarctic #ocean #TippingPoint

  13. ‘Two incredible extreme events’: #Antarctic #seaice on cusp of record winter low for second year running
    Last year Antartica’s #sea #ice was 1.6m sq km below average – the size of Britain, France, Germany and Spain combined. This week it had even less than that
    theguardian.com/world/article/ #climate #climatechange #cliamtecrisis

  14. ❄️#ClimateChange is rapidly transforming the #Arctic and #Antarctic, impacting ecosystems and communities

    📝Our new #policybrief with @CRiceS covers the need for reliable high resolution climate models to empower #EU climate decision making

    🔍Read the policy brief here: polarres.eu/polarresnews/enhan

    @horizoneu @eupolarcluster
    #H2020

  15. Really outstanding work from Leeds Uni Remote sensing, led by Ben Davison, on observed changes to #Antarctic #IceShelves

    This was a highlight presentation of @OceanIceEU workshop bringing #EarthObservation + #climateModelling communities together earlier this year - which I am now coincidentally writing up as a report + recommendations for publication as I travel by #crossBorderRail today...

    Worth a read, Ben is really good at beautiful easy to interpret graphics.

    science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv

  16. Scientists count huge melts in many protective Antarctic ice shelves. Trillions of tons of ice lost.

    cbc.ca/news/canada/north/antar

    "Four dozen Antarctic ice shelves have shrunk by at least 30 per cent since 1997 and 28 of those have lost more than half of their ice in that time, reports a new study that surveyed these crucial "gatekeepers" between the frozen continent's massive glaciers and open ocean."
    #Antarctic #IceMelts

  17. We finally have submitted our study about emulating #Antarctic sub-shelf #melt rates simulated by a cavity-opening ocean #model with a #NeuralNetwork

    Main conclusion: a neural network is at least as good in parameterising basal melt rates as traditional physics-based parameterisations!

    #climate #modelling #IceShelves #IceSheet #DeepLearning #BasalMelt

    Co-authors on the #fediverse: @nicojourd @tobifinn

    Check out the preprint here: doi.org/10.22541/essoar.168500

  18. A new twist on an older idea: a temperature threshold for #Antarctic #IceShelves
    But @jmvanwessem @steflhermitte et al show #Snow is key:

    Variable temperature thresholds of melt pond formation on Antarctic ice shelves

    "For relatively wet ice shelves, the −5 °C temperature threshold was confirmed; but cold + dry ice shelves such as Amery, Ross + Filchner-Ronne are more vulnerable than previously thought, with threshold temperatures well below −15 °C. "

    4/x
    nature.com/articles/s41558-022

  19. To start off the 1 paper per week challenge of this year, here is my #PaperOfTheWeek, or rather #PreprintOfTheWeek 😀

    tc.copernicus.org/preprints/tc

    They present and evaluate a new one-layer dynamical model to improve the fine-scale representation of #melt patterns under #Antarctic #IceShelves. Interesting to see how this can be applied to improve future #SeaLevel projections!
    Quite technical but interesting for #ocean and #IceSheet #modelers!