During the COVID summer of 2020-21, just 15 tourists on two yachts visited Antarctica. But now, tourism is back—and bigger than ever. This season's visitor numbers are up more than 40% over the largest pre-pandemic year.
With the Arctic Ocean being twice as sensitive to rapid warming than the global average, evaporation and subsequent changes to the hydrological cycle over northern Eurasia will become even more pronounced in the years to come.
Understanding transport and transformation processes within the carbon cycle is essential to creating global carbon dioxide budgets and therefore also projections for global warming.
An international team of researchers have sounded new alarm bells about the changing chemistry of the western region of the Arctic Ocean after discovering acidity levels increasing three to four times faster than ocean waters elsewhere.
Pine Island Ice Shelf in West Antarctica, which holds back enough ice to raise sea levels by 0.5 metres, could be more vulnerable to complete disintegration than previously thought.
This massive ice stream is already in a phase of fast retreat (a "collapse" when viewed on geological timescales) leading to widespread concern about exactly how much, or how fast, it may give up its ice to the ocean.
Whilst scientists have a good understanding of how the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is melting and contributing to sea level rise, far less was known about the East, until now.
