ReportWire

Tag: antarctica

  • Scientists Just Found Another Way Antarctica Is Falling Apart

    The West Antarctic Ice Sheet covers some 760,000 square miles and is up to 1.2 miles thick. If it were to ever melt away entirely, it would add 10 feet to global sea levels. Even considering how quickly humans are heating the planet, such a change would likely unfold over centuries—that’s how much ice we’re talking about here. But scientists are finding more and more evidence that Antarctica’s ice is in far more peril than previously believed, with many abrupt changes, like the loss of sea ice, reinforcing one another.

    We can now add underwater “storms” to the troubles unfolding around the frozen continent. A new paper suggests that vortices are drawing relatively warm waters across the underside of the extension of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, known as the ice shelf, floating on the Southern Ocean, potentially accelerating its destruction.

    The seemingly serene waters around the shelf are in fact rather chaotic. For one, strong winds scour the sea surface, pushing it along. But what’s driving these storms is the gain and loss of ice: when it freezes, it ejects salt, and when it melts, it injects that fresh H2O into the sea. This changes the density of ocean water, creating vortices that draw warmth from the depths. “They look exactly like a storm,” said lead author Mattia Poinelli, a glaciologist at University of California, Irvine and an affiliate at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, describing the work in the journal Nature Geoscience. “They’re strongly energetic, so there is a very vertical and turbulent motion that happens near the surface.”

    This is bad news for the shelf because it displaces the insulating layer of frigid water where the ice meets the sea, which should prevent melting. Other scientists have found that instead of the underbelly being flat—which would help that insulating layer accumulate—it can undulate, creating currents that similarly expose the ice to warm waters. (Researchers are only recently learning these things because it’s exceedingly difficult to see what’s going on down there—advanced robots are now getting the job done.) “We’re really trying to understand, where is warm water getting in, how’s it getting in, and what are these processes by which the ice is melting from below?” said Clare Eayrs, a climate scientist at the Korea Polar Research Institute, who wasn’t involved in the new paper.

    The troubles under the shelf are bad news for the rest of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Think of the floating bit like a cork holding back the glacier resting on land. If melting along the shelf’s underbelly makes it break up, the sheet will march more quickly into the ocean, raising sea levels around the world.

    Not helping matters is the dramatic decline of sea ice surrounding the continent. All those chunks normally act as a buffer, absorbing the wave energy that would otherwise crash into the shelf and break it apart. Sea ice also helps keep marine temperatures cool: because it’s white, it reflects the sun’s energy back into space, but with darker waters exposed, the sea instead absorbs that heat.

    As sea ice disappears and the shelf degrades, more fresh water is added to the ocean, meaning more of the storms that drive more melting—and on and on. “In the future, where there is going to be more warm water, more melting, we’re going to probably see more of these effects in different areas of Antarctica,” Poinelli said.

    These storms may also help explain the retreat of Antarctica’s “grounding lines,” where the ice lifts off the land and begins floating on the ocean. Researchers have previously found that as fresh water flows beneath the ice sheet and into the ocean, it creates turbulence that draws up warm water, further hastening melting. Earlier this month, a separate team of researchers used a quarter-century’s worth of data to find grounding line retreat of up to 2,300 feet a year. When that happens, warm ocean water can access more parts of the glacier, eating away at the ice and making the entire sheet system less stable.

    And now storms could be adding to this attack on the grounding line. “This study provides a compelling mechanism of tiny but powerful storms that punch beneath the ice and accelerate melt,” said Pietro Milillo, a physicist at the University of Houston who co-authored the retreat paper but wasn’t involved in the storm research. “The kind of retreats that we see in our dataset can be partially explained with these underwater storms.”

    Just how much more melting we might see because of these storms remains an open question. Also, the finding came out of a model, though Poinelli said scientists have observed the dynamic in another area of Antarctica. Scientists desperately need more data to get a better idea of how fast this ice will disappear and, as a consequence, how quickly sea levels will rise. “We sometimes think the ice sheet responds slowly to changes, but this work, and our work, remind us that Antarctica can change on timescales of days or weeks,” Milillo said. “We need to monitor the underside of the ice shelf with the same urgency we monitor atmospheric storms.”

    This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/science/violent-storms-hidden-under-antarcticas-ice-could-be-speeding-its-decline/. Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org.

    Matt Simon, Grist

    Source link

  • Scientists Find 6-Million-Year-Old Air Trapped in Earth’s Oldest Known Ice

    Science likes to travel far in search of new phenomena, but nature keeps reminding us that, really, we’ve yet to discover many things much closer to us. That was a clear lesson for researchers who dug up the oldest ice on record—an ancient piece of Earth’s geological history from roughly 6 million years ago.

    For a paper published on October 28 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Center for Oldest Ice Exploration, or COLDEX, describes the enigmatic composition of a 6-million-year-old ice core collected from the Allan Hills, a family of frigid hills in southeastern Antarctica. By carefully studying the composition of tiny air bubbles, permafrost, and other frozen deposits inside, the researchers derived an impressive reconstruction of Earth’s atmosphere from millions of years into the past.

    The samples present “discontinuous climate ‘snapshots’ that are much older and extend back into a much warmer interval in Earth’s history,” Sarah Shackleton, study lead author and a geophysicist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, told Gizmodo in an email.

    The newest core is almost two times older than the previously oldest discontinuous ice core on record, dated at about 2.7 million years old, according to the paper.

    Frozen time machines

    Ice cores, as their name suggests, are solid, typically cylindrical samples drilled from ice sheets. East Antarctica harbors some of the oldest ice in the world, although reaching it requires drilling up to 6,500 feet (2,000 meters) underground—while, of course, abiding by international guidelines for environmental preservation.

    “Traditionally, the deeper you drill, the older the ice gets,” Shackleton said, “but things are a bit more complicated at the Allan Hills, where very old ice outcrops at the surface.”

    A photograph of the Allan Hills in Antarctica, where the researchers retrieved the ice cores. Credit: Julia Marks Peterson/COLDEX Collaboration

    To be exact, the Allan Hills are very windy and cold, which enables older ice to persist nearer to the surface, at about 300 to 650 feet (100 to 200 meters), but also makes in-person expeditions very difficult, she added. Still, the team managed to retrieve three new ice cores over several years of camping out at Allan Hill for months at a time.

    A window to the past

    Once they collected the cores, the team took detailed measurements of the isotopes of argon for the trapped air bubbles inside the samples. This allowed the researchers to pin down the age of each sample. They also used laser spectroscopy to identify different oxygen isotopes in the meltwater, which revealed that the area corresponding to today’s Allan Hills experienced a gradual, long-term decrease in temperatures of about 22 degrees F (12 degrees C).

    There was, however, one sample, dirty basal ice, that was basically gas-free. This made it impossible to date, Shackleton said. But analysis of the water isotopes for this sample suggests it formed at a much warmer temperature, and its position just below the oldest-dated sample strongly suggests it could be even older than 6 million years.

    Basal Ice Sample Oldest Ice Antarctica
    One of the ice samples was essentially gas-free, making it impossible for the researchers to directly date. Credit: COLDEX Collaboration

    “Given that it’s gas-free, it’s likely refrozen liquid water,” Shackleton said. “We’ve speculated about what it represents and what it can tell us about the past conditions at this site, but it’s still somewhat of a mystery.”

    Overall, the findings demonstrate the potential of ice cores in investigating and reconstructing climates long past—a critical insight, especially for warmer periods, since they could guide how scientists approach natural climate change. Either way, Shackleton and her colleagues are already at work to find how else ice cores may have frozen geological information in time.

    “We think we’ve just scratched the surface of what’s possible, and much more data is forthcoming, both new measurements and new cores,” she said. “Based on what we’ve found so far, we think there may be even older ice out there to discover.”

    Gayoung Lee

    Source link

  • Scientists Went Looking for Shackleton’s Endurance. They found a Hidden Fish City in Perfect Formation Instead

    While tracing the footsteps of polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton and his ill-fated Endurance ship, researchers discovered hundreds of fish nests arranged in particular patterns.

    A remotely operated vehicle (ROV) investigating the seafloor in Antarctica’s Western Weddell Sea found over 1,000 circular nests making up a large geometric neighborhood. The discovery sheds light onto the unique ecosystems thriving in Earth’s most extreme environments and carries significant implications for conservation efforts.

    A dynamic fish community

    The nests (the divots in the sand pictured in the image below) belong to a species of rockcod known as the yellowfin notie and were located in an area previously covered by a 656-foot-thick (200-meter) ice shelf. Some were arranged individually, while others were in curves or clusters. It even turns out yellowfin notie are orderly homekeepers—while the surrounding seafloor was covered in plankton detritus, each nest was clean.

    The yellowfin notie nests. © Weddell Sea Expedition 2019

    The researchers describe the fish community as a mix of cooperation and self-interest in a study published today in Frontiers in Marine Science. A parent fish would have guarded each nest, but the arrangement of the nests themselves also played a defensive role. The nest clusters represent the “selfish herd” theory, which suggests that individuals in the center of a group are safer than those on the margins. According to the researchers, the isolated nests likely housed larger and stronger fish who were better suited to protecting their nests.

    Following the footsteps of Endurance

    Researchers found the fish neighborhood during the Weddell Sea Expedition 2019, which aimed to conduct research near the Larsen Ice Shelf and find the wreck of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ship. Endurance was crushed by pack ice in 1915 before it got swallowed by the sea. Miraculously, the entire crew survived the misadventure.

    Endurance Sinking
    Endurance sinking in the ice. © Frank Hurley, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

    The same perilous conditions that upended Shackleton’s undertaking over 100 years ago prevented the 2019 expedition aboard South African polar research vessel SA Agulhas II from locating his ship—that happened in 2022. Nonetheless, the team found a peculiar habitat associated with ice shelves, a crucial formation involved in ice flow and sea level rise.

    In the wake of A68 iceberg

    Antarctica’s borders are laced with floating ice shelves that hold back the flow of glaciers. When ice shelves are lost, glaciers flow freely into the ocean, raising sea levels. The Larsen Ice Shelf is in West Antarctica, and it’s so long that researchers refer to its various sections as Larsen A, B, C, and D. In 2017, a giant chunk of Larsen C broke off and turned into one of the world’s largest icebergs. Called the A68 iceberg, it measured 2,240 square miles (5,800 square kilometers) at its peak.

    The team was able to explore previously inaccessible areas of the seabed with an ROV and autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) in the wake of the ice shelf’s splitting. Their subsequent discovery of the fish nests indicates that the area hosts an unusual and vulnerable habitat vital to biodiversity with important ramifications for conservation, given that their study joins a host of other research supporting the proposal to formally designate the Weddell Sea as a Marine Protected Area.

    More broadly, the paper represents further evidence that life finds a way even in the most inhospitable of regions.

    Margherita Bassi

    Source link

  • New Study Reveals Why the Endurance Sank

    British polar explorer Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton established his place in the annals of history after ensuring the survival of his entire crew following the shipwreck of Endurance in 1915. A new paper sheds light on the state of the infamous vessel—and what Shackleton knew of it before setting off.

    Jukka Tuhkuri, a polar explorer and researcher specializing in ice mechanics and arctic marine technology at Finland’s Aalto University, has revealed that Endurance was not as sturdy as widely believed, and that Shackleton knew about its structural shortcomings. His work adds nuance to one of the most famous survival stories over 100 years since the explorer’s death and three years since he and the rest of the Endurance22 mission found the shipwreck.

    A dramatic turn of events

    In August 1914, Shackleton and his crew set sail from England. The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition aimed to achieve the first overland crossing of the Antarctic continent. The plan was for a team to hike from the Weddell Sea over the South Pole to the Ross Sea, but the main expedition ship Endurance got stuck in pack ice in 1915 and was eventually crushed, sinking below the water in November. The 28 members of the crew survived on the ice before using boats to reach Elephant Island. From there, a small team including Shackleton sailed 800 miles (1,300 km) to South Georgia Island to get help. By September 1916, the whole Endurance crew had been rescued without losing a single life.

    Endurance sinking in the ice. © Frank Hurley, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

    “Even simple structural analysis shows that the ship was not designed for the compressive pack ice conditions that eventually sank it,” Tuhkuri said in an Aalto University statement. “The danger of moving ice and compressive loads — and how to design a ship for such conditions — was well understood before the ship sailed south. So we really have to wonder why Shackleton chose a vessel that was not strengthened for compressive ice.”

    According to Tuhkuri, Endurance is widely believed to be the strongest polar ship of its time, but with one failing—a problem with the rudder—that would lead to its unfortunate end. By combining technical analysis and archival research in a study published today in the journal Polar Record, the researcher revealed this to be a flawed perception.

    “Endurance clearly had several structural deficiencies compared with other early Antarctic ships,” he said. “The deck beams and frames were weaker, the machine compartment was longer, leading to serious weakening in a significant part of the hull, plus there were no diagonal beams to strengthen the hull. Not only does this challenge the romantic narrative that it was the strongest polar ship of its time, but it also belies the simplistic idea that the rudder was the ship’s Achilles’ heel.”

    Why did Shackleton sail on Endurance?

    Despite investigating Shackleton’s diaries, personal correspondence, and other communications from the crew, Tuhkuri isn’t sure why Shackleton decided to sail with Endurance. He knew about the ship’s problems—Tuhkuri said that the explorer complained about it to his wife before the start of the expedition, wishing for his previous vessel.

    “In fact, he had recommended diagonal beams for another polar ship when visiting a Norwegian shipyard. That same ship got stuck in compression ice for months and survived it,” Tuhkuri continued.

    As such, the paper prompts an interesting question. Was the ship “ill-fated,” or were bad calls at the heart of it? Tuhkuri, however, chose to leave it unanswered. While he hopes his research will contribute a novel point of view to our understanding of the vessel, he says that it doesn’t try to diminish Shackleton and his crew’s accomplishment.

    “We can speculate about financial pressures or time constraints, but the truth is we may never know why Shackleton made the choices that he made. At least now we have more concrete findings to flesh out the stories,” he concluded.

    Margherita Bassi

    Source link

  • Former Google CEO Will Fund Boat Drones to Explore Rough Antarctic Waters

    A foundation created by Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, will fund a project to send drone boats out into the rough ocean around Antarctica to collect data that could help solve a crucial climate puzzle. The project is part of a suite of funding announced today from Schmidt Sciences, which Schmidt and his wife Wendy created to focus on projects tackling research into the global carbon cycle. It will spend $45 million over the next five years to fund these projects, which includes the Antarctic research.

    “The ocean provides this really critical climate regulation service to all of us, and yet we don’t understand it as well as we could,” says Galen McKinley, a professor of environmental sciences at Columbia University and the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory and one of the lead scientists on the project. “I’m just really excited to see how much this data can really pull together the community of people who are trying to understand and quantify the ocean carbon sink.”

    The world’s oceans are its largest carbon sinks, absorbing about a third of the CO2 humans put into the atmosphere each year. One of the most important carbon sinks is the Southern Ocean, the body of water surrounding Antarctica. Despite being the second smallest of the world’s five oceans, the Southern Ocean is responsible for about 40 percent of all ocean-based carbon dioxide absorption.

    Scientists, however, know surprisingly little about why, exactly, the Southern Ocean is such a successful carbon sink. What’s more, climate models that successfully predict ocean carbon absorption elsewhere in the world have diverged significantly when it comes to the Southern Ocean.

    One of the biggest issues with understanding more about what’s going on in the Southern Ocean is simply a lack of data. This is thanks in part to the extreme conditions in the region. The Drake Passage, which runs between South America and Argentina, is one of the toughest stretches of ocean for ships, due to incredibly strong currents around Antarctica and dangerous winds; it’s even rougher in the winter months. The ocean also has a particularly pronounced cloud cover, Crisp says, which makes satellite observations difficult.

    “The Southern Ocean is really far away, so we just haven’t done a lot of science there,” says McKinley. “It is a very big ocean, and it is this dramatic and scary place to go.”

    Molly Taft

    Source link

  • These Climate Hacks to Save the Poles Could Totally Backfire

    Last year, the United Nations predicted that Earth’s average temperature could rise more than 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius) by 2100 if we don’t reduce global emissions. That level of warming would cause catastrophic, irreversible damage to ecosystems, underscoring the urgent need to slow the pace of climate change.

    Still, the amount of greenhouse gases humans pump into the atmosphere continues to rise. Without sufficient progress on the emissions front, some scientists have suggested another route: artificially counteracting global warming through geoengineering. Many of these controversial solutions aim to mitigate climate breakdown in the polar regions, but a review published Tuesday in Frontiers in Science concludes that even the most widely recognized proposals are likely to cause more harm than good.

    “I find that there’s been confusion between urgency and haste,” co-author Ben Orlove, a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, told Gizmodo. “Though we recognize the urgency of action, that should never serve as an excuse for incompletely reviewed proposals moving forward.”

    Polar regions under pressure

    Earth’s polar regions are warming faster than the average global temperature. Experts predict this will lead to severe and irreversible consequences both regionally and globally, such as local ecosystem collapse and sea level rise. Proponents of geoengineering often cite this as a driving force behind efforts to implement such strategies in the Arctic and Antarctic, but none of them are backed by robust, real-world testing at scale.

    For this review, an international team of researchers evaluated five geoengineering concepts designed to slow the pace of ice melt in the polar regions. The ideas include spraying reflective particles into the atmosphere, using giant underwater curtains to shield ice shelves from warm water, artificially thickening or boosting the reflectivity of sea ice, pumping water out from underneath glaciers, and adding nutrients to polar oceans to stimulate blooms of carbon-sequestering phytoplankton.

    More problems than solutions

    The researchers evaluated each proposed solution’s scope of implementation, effectiveness, feasibility, negative consequences, cost, and governance with respect to their deployment at scale. According to their assessment, all five ideas would lead to environmental damages such as the disruption of habitats, migration routes, the ocean’s natural chemical cycle, global climate patterns, and more.

    Additionally, the authors estimate that each proposal would cost at least $10 billion to implement and maintain. This is likely an underestimate, they say, pointing to hidden costs that would undoubtedly arise as environmental and logistical consequences come into play. What’s more, polar regions lack sufficient governance to regulate these projects, necessitating extensive political negotiation and new frameworks before large-scale deployment.

    Even if these tactics offered some benefit, none could scale fast enough to meaningfully address the climate crisis within the limited time available to do so, the researchers concluded.

    “It is clear to us that the assessed approaches are not feasible, and that further research into these techniques would not be an effective use of limited time and resources,” the authors write, emphasizing the importance of focusing on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and conducting fundamental research in the polar regions.

    Not every fix is worth the risk

    Orlove hopes these findings encourage the scientific community and decision-makers to exercise scrutiny before investing time and money in polar geoengineering projects. “One of the things that troubles me is the claim that climate change is so severe that we need to try all possible methods, and blocking any possible solution is an error,” he said.

    “There is a long history in medical research of not undertaking certain experiments on living humans and not attempting extreme cures that just seem unethical,” Orlove said. “But when it comes to experimenting on the planet—and its immediate effect on people—that kind of awareness doesn’t come forward.”

    Ellyn Lapointe

    Source link

  • U.S. influencer pilot Ethan Guo released from Chilean air base in Antarctica 2 months after landing without permission

    Ethan Guo, an American social media influencer who has been stuck in a Chilean airbase in Antarctica for two months after landing a plane there without permission, was released on Saturday back to the mainland, where he was to pay $30,000 in penalties.

    In a statement to CBS News, Guo’s attorney said he’s doing “pretty well,” adding that he appeared to have been treated well on the air base.

    “Of course, we do not agree with the legal process opened against him, but it has already been closed with a type of dismissal,” Jaime Barrientos Ramírez said.

    Guo, who was 19 when he began his fundraising mission for cancer research, was attempting to become the youngest person to fly solo to all seven continents.

    But he was detained after Chilean authorities said he lied to officials by providing authorities with “false flight plan data.” Prosecutors said he had been authorized to only fly over Punta Arenas in southern Chile, but that he kept going south, heading for Antarctica in his Cessna 182Q — a single-engine light aircraft known for its versatility.

    American pilot Ethan Guo poses for the photographer in Geneva, Switzerland, Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2024, before his take off from Geneva Airport for attempting a world record solo flight to all seven continents. 

    Salvatore Di Nolfi / AP


    After he landed in Chile’s Antarctic territory on June 28, he was detained in a military base amid legal negotiations between his lawyers and the government. Guo, who is originally from Tennessee and turned 20 in July, spent two months living in the base with limited communications and freezing Antarctic winter temperatures plunging below zero. The last video he posted to Instagram was on June 23, in which he flew from Davao City in the Philippines to Manila.

    Guo said he hoped to become the first pilot to complete a solo flight across all seven continents in a small Cessna, a feat that simultaneously aims to raise $1 million for cancer research through St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. On his site, Guo cites his cousin’s 2021 cancer diagnosis as his source of inspiration.

    He was released by a Chilean judge on the condition that he donate the money he has raised to a childhood cancer foundation within 30 days and leave the country as soon as possible. He is also banned from entering Chilean territory for three years.

    The influencer’s lawyer told The Associated Press that Guo landed because he had to divert his aircraft due to poor weather conditions, and that he did receive authorization from Chilean authorities.

    “To his surprise, when he was about to take off back to Punta Arenas, he was arrested, in a process that from my perspective was a total exaggeration,” Barrientos said.

    Barrientos said he was happy with the agreement struck with authorities.

    Guo landed Saturday at Punta Arenas aboard a navy ship wearing a Chilean national soccer team jersey and appeared friendly with the press after disembarking, describing his detention as a “mundane” experience with “limited freedoms”.

    “The Chilean people have been incredibly hospitable; they’ve been fantastic people. They’ve taken care of me. They’ve taught me Spanish, and they’ve treated me like family,” he said.

    Source link

  • The World’s Biggest Iceberg Is Finally Crumbling

    Just months ago, the world’s largest iceberg weighed about a trillion tons and covered an area nearly the size of Anchorage, Alaska. Now it’s less than half that—and rapidly disappearing.

    In recent weeks, massive chunks of ice measuring up to 250 square miles (400 square kilometers) have sloughed off the ‘megaberg’ known as A23a. Smaller pieces float freely in the surrounding waters too, many of them still big enough to threaten ships.

    The iceberg’s disintegration has reduced its total area to 683 square miles (1,770 square kilometers), according to an Agence France-Presse analysis of satellite images captured by the European Union Earth observation monitor Copernicus. It could disappear completely within weeks.

    Andrew Meijers, a physical oceanographer from the British Antarctic Survey, told AFP that A23a was “breaking up fairly dramatically” as it drifted further north. “I’d say it’s very much on its way out…it’s basically rotting underneath,” he said. “The water is way too warm for it to maintain. It’s constantly melting.”

    End of the line

    This could mark the end of A23a’s 40-year-long journey, which started when the iceberg broke off Antarctica’s Filchner Ice Shelf in 1986, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It remained grounded on the bottom of the Weddell Sea for more than 30 years before detaching and beginning its slow drift northward in 2020. Over the next four years, A23a followed the Antarctic Circumpolar Current on a path known as “Iceberg Alley” and then became trapped in an ocean vortex near the South Orkney Islands in April 2024.

    After finally breaking free eight months later, the iceberg resumed its journey north. In March, it ran aground near the Southern Ocean’s South Georgia Island, sparking fears that it could disrupt large colonies of penguins and seals. Fortunately, it dislodged in May, drifting around the island and northward again.

    As A23a has encountered huge waves and increasingly warmer waters, it’s been crumbling into the ocean. Losing half its size in a matter of months is staggering, but most icebergs never make it this far from the frigid waters of Antarctica, Meijers said. “This one’s really big so it has lasted longer and gone further than others,” he explained.

    Still, A23a is shrinking faster than new ice can form. “I expect that to continue in the coming weeks, and expect it won’t be really identifiable within a few weeks,” Meijers said. It’s unclear how much water this megaberg contained at its peak, but the similarly sized A68a dumped more than 1 trillion tons of fresh water into the ocean during its lifetime.

    A warning sign

    Contrary to popular belief, melting icebergs—even giants like A68a and A23a—don’t raise global sea levels. That’s because they’re already floating in the ocean. However, their rapid disappearance is a clear sign of rising global temperatures, which do contribute to sea level rise by accelerating glacial melt.

    Recent research estimates that Antarctica’s ice sheet could raise global sea levels 11 inches (28 centimeters) by 2100, and potentially more if we surpass certain warming thresholds. That said, much remains unknown about the processes that underlie accelerated sea level rise. Despite uncertainties in future projections, the disappearance of Antarctic behemoths like A23a serves as a stark reminder of how rapidly humans are reshaping this critical region.

    Ellyn Lapointe

    Source link

  • Antarctica Is Changing Rapidly. The Consequences Could Be Dire

    This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

    Seen from space, Antarctica looks so much simpler than the other continents—a great sheet of ice set in contrast to the dark waters of the encircling Southern Ocean. Get closer, though, and you’ll find not a simple cap of frozen water, but an extraordinarily complex interplay between the ocean, sea ice, and ice sheets and shelves.

    That relationship is in serious peril. A new paper in the journal Nature catalogs how several “abrupt changes,” like the precipitous loss of sea ice over the last decade, are unfolding in Antarctica and its surrounding waters, reinforcing one another and threatening to send the continent past the point of no return—and flood coastal cities everywhere as the sea rises several feet.

    “We’re seeing a whole range of abrupt and surprising changes developing across Antarctica, but these aren’t happening in isolation,” said climate scientist Nerilie Abram, lead author of the paper. (She conducted the research while at Australian National University but is now chief scientist at the Australian Antarctic Division.) “When we change one part of the system, that has knock-on effects that worsen the changes in other parts of the system. And we’re talking about changes that also have global consequences.”

    Scientists define abrupt change as a bit of the environment changing much faster than expected. In Antarctica these can occur on a range of times scales, from days or weeks for an ice shelf collapse, and centuries and beyond for the ice sheets. Unfortunately, these abrupt changes can self-perpetuate and become unstoppable as humans continue to warm the planet. “It’s the choices that we’re making right now, and this decade and the next, for greenhouse gas emissions that will set in place those commitments to long-term change,” Abram said.

    A major driver of Antarctica’s cascading crises is the loss of floating sea ice, which forms during winter. In 2014, it hit a peak extent (at least since satellite observations began in 1978) around Antarctica of 20.11 million square kilometers, or 7.76 million square miles. But since then, the coverage of sea ice has fallen not just precipitously, but almost unbelievably, contracting by 75 miles closer to the coast. During winters, when sea ice reaches its maximum coverage, it has declined 4.4 times faster around Antarctica than it has in the Arctic in the last decade.

    Put another way: The loss of winter sea ice in Antarctica over just the past decade is similar to what the Arctic has lost over the last 46 years. “People always thought the Antarctic was not changing compared to the Arctic, and I think now we’re seeing signs that that’s no longer the case,” said climatologist Ryan Fogt, who studies Antarctica at Ohio University but wasn’t involved in the new paper. “We’re seeing just as rapid—and in many cases, more rapid—change in the Antarctic than the Arctic lately.”

    While scientists need to collect more data to determine if this is the beginning of a fundamental shift in Antarctica, the signals so far are ominous. “We’re starting to see the pieces of the picture begin to emerge that we very well might be in this new state of dramatic loss of Antarctic sea ice,” said Zachary M. Labe, a climate scientist who studies the region at the research group Climate Central, which wasn’t involved in the new paper.

    Matt Simon

    Source link

  • Abrupt Antarctic climate shifts could lead to

    Rapid changes in the coldest place on Earth could have dangerous consequences for years to come, thousands of miles away. In a new study, experts warn that abrupt and potentially irreversible environmental shifts in Antarctica could dramatically raise global ocean levels, resulting in catastrophe for future generations. Nerilie Abram, lead author of the study, joins “The Daily Report” to discuss.

    Source link

  • Stunning details of iconic shipwreck Endurance revealed in never-before-seen footage

    Stunning details of iconic shipwreck Endurance revealed in never-before-seen footage

    Legendary Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance sank more than a century ago and its wreck lay undiscovered at the bottom of the Weddell Sea until March 2022.

    Now, the team behind its discovery has joined forces with an Oscar-winning film crew for a new National Geographic documentary showcasing how they located the storied vessel’s last resting place.

    “Endurance” features thousands of 3D scans shot by a 4K camera deployed to a depth of nearly 10,000 feet. It premiered at the London Film Festival last weekend before its release in cinemas and then on Disney+.

    The never-before-seen footage captures everything from a flare gun and man’s boot to dinnerware used by the crew and identifiable parts of the vessel.

    wheel-screenshot-2024-10-16-072017.jpg
    Endurance Taffrail and ship’s wheel, afte well deck.

    Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust / National Geographic


    “We were absolutely blown away,” Mensun Bound, the 2022 discovery team’s director of exploration, told AFP. “We didn’t expect to see the ship’s wheel — the most emblematic part of the ship — just standing there, upright.”

    History broadcaster Dan Snow, an executive producer on “Endurance”, called finding it in such a “stunning state” an “astonishing achievement”.

    “No one’s ever found a wooden shipwreck 3,000 metres down in one of the most remote places on earth underneath the ice,” he said.

    “It’s important because it is connected with this story of Shackleton and the 1914-16 expedition, which is one of the greatest stories ever told — a story of leadership and survival like nothing else.”

    The flare gun that was discovered was fired by Frank Hurley, the expedition’s photographer, as the ship was lost to the ice, the BBC reported.

    “Hurley gets this flare gun, and he fires the flare gun into the air with a massive detonator as a tribute to the ship,” expedition leader John Shears said. “And then in the diary, he talks about putting it down on the deck. And there we are. We come back over 100 years later, and there’s that flare gun, incredible.”

    Anglo-Irish explorer Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition was meant to make the first land crossing of the frozen continent.

    But its three-masted timber sailing ship Endurance fell victim to the treacherous Weddell Sea, becoming ensnared in pack ice in January 1915. It was progressively crushed and sank 10 months later.

    Shackleton, who died in 1922, described the site of the sinking as “the worst portion of the worst sea in the world.”

    3D scan of the Endurance in her final resting place at the bottom of the Weddell Sea.

    Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust / National Geographic


    He cemented his status as a legend of exploration by leading an epic escape for himself and his 27 companions, on foot over the ice and then in boats to the British overseas territory of South Georgia, some 870 miles east of the Falklands.

    “I do believe of all the great survival stories I’ve ever heard of, this one takes the cake because it involves so many people,” said Jimmy Chin, who directed and produced the new film jointly with Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi.

    The husband-and-wife team behind Oscar-winning movie “Free Solo” saw the expedition organized by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust as a chance to “bring the story to a new generation.”

    “The ultimate polar challenge”

    The documentary alternates between accounts of the original and the 2022 missions, as the modern-day explorers conduct dozens of fruitless deep-sea dives using a state-of-the-art submersible as a deadline nears to leave before winter sets in.

    A trailer for the film shows footage from the original 1914 expedition combined with video from the modern-day search.  


    ENDURANCE | Official Trailer | National Geographic Documentary Films by
    National Geographic on
    YouTube

    Bound recounted the various challenges the latter-day team faced, including technology, research and climate, with one thing reminiscent of what Shackleton’s men confronted.

    “Ice, ice and ice,” he said, adding that the documentary clearly highlights “the brutality” of the conditions they faced.

    “This is probably the most difficult project I’ve ever been involved in… it wasn’t called the unreachable Endurance for nothing, was it?”

    Shears also said there was a “real parallel” between the two endeavors and that like Shackleton he was drawn to “the ultimate polar challenge.”

    “More people have been into space orbit than have ever walked on the surface sea ice where the Endurance sank,” said Shears, who previously led an unsuccessful attempt to find the wreck in 2019.

    Chin and Vasarhelyi said combining the two stories was challenging but they were complementary.

    “The two stories, even though they’re separated by 110 years, speak to each other,” said Vasarhelyi.

    “They both chronicle this fundamental human condition of the audacity to dream big… have ambition, coupled with the diligence, determination, the grit and the ingenuity to see it through.”

    To tell the original story, they opted to use AI to capture Shackleton and six crew members’ diary entries in their own voices, based on other recordings.

    The filmmakers also used restored and colorized photographs and film expedition footage taken by Frank Hurley.

    But audiences must wait until the closing stages of the documentary to see the new imagery of Endurance — a choice Vaserhelyi admitted felt “terrible” but necessary.

    “This was a great story with a great payoff, but you have to earn it, right?” she explained.

    “What’s nice is that the film really plays as this introduction… and it builds to this amazing moment.”

    Source link

  • World’s largest iceberg on the move after dislodging from ocean floor

    World’s largest iceberg on the move after dislodging from ocean floor


    World’s largest iceberg on the move after dislodging from ocean floor – CBS News


    Watch CBS News



    Satellite imagery from recent months shows Antarctica’s A23a gradually heading north toward open water after breaking free from the ocean floor last November. Iceberg researcher Dr. Andrew Meijers joins CBS News to discuss.

    Be the first to know

    Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.




    Source link

  • ‘Like going to the moon’: The world’s most terrifying ocean crossing | CNN

    ‘Like going to the moon’: The world’s most terrifying ocean crossing | CNN


    Editor’s Note: Sign up for Unlocking the World, CNN Travel’s weekly newsletter. Get the latest news in aviation, food and drink, where to stay and other travel developments.



    CNN
     — 

    It’s the body of water that instils fear and inspires sailors in equal measure. Six hundred miles of open sea, and some of the roughest conditions on the planet – with an equally inhospitable land of snow and ice awaiting you at the end of it.

    “The most dreaded bit of ocean on the globe – and rightly so,” Alfred Lansing wrote of explorer Ernest Shackleton’s 1916 voyage across it in a small lifeboat. It is, of course, the Drake Passage, connecting the southern tip of the South American continent with the northernmost point of the Antarctic Peninsula.

    Once the preserve of explorers and sea dogs, the Drake is today a daunting challenge for an ever-increasing number of travelers to Antarctica – and not just because it takes up to 48 hours to cross it. For many, being able to boast of surviving the “Drake shake” is part of the attraction of going to the “white continent.”

    But what causes those “shakes,” which can see waves topping nearly 50 feet battering the ships? And how do sailors navigate the planet’s wildest waters?

    For oceanographers, it turns out, the Drake is a fascinating place because of what’s going on under the surface of those thrashing waters. And for ship captains, it’s a challenge that needs to be approached with a healthy dose of fear.

    At around 600 miles wide and up to 6,000 meters (nearly four miles) deep, the Drake is objectively a vast body of water. To us, that is. To the planet as a whole, less so.

    The Antarctic Peninsula, where tourists visit, isn’t even Antarctica proper. It’s a thinning peninsula, rotating northwards from the vast continent of Antarctica, and reaching towards the southern tip of South America – the two pointing towards each other, a bit like a tectonic version of Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” in the Sistine Chapel.

    That creates a pinch point effect, with the water being squeezed between the two land masses – the ocean is surging through the gap between the continents.

    “It’s the only place in the world where those winds can push all around the globe without hitting land – and land tends to dampen storms,” says oceanographer Alexander Brearley, head of open oceans at the British Antarctic Survey.

    Winds tend to blow west to east, he says – and the latitudes of 40 to 60 are notorious for strong winds. Hence their nicknames of the “roaring forties,” “furious fifties” and “screaming sixties” (Antarctica officially starts at 60 degrees).

    But winds are slowed by landmass – which is why Atlantic storms tend to smash into Ireland and the UK (as they did, causing havoc, with Storm Isha in January buffeting planes to entirely different countries) and then weaken as they continue east to the European continent.

    With no land to slow them down at the Drake’s latitude anywhere on the planet, winds can hurtle around the globe, gathering pace – and smashing into ships.

    “In the middle of the Drake Passage the winds may have blown over thousands of kilometers to where you are,” says Brearley. “Kinetic energy is converted from wind into waves, and builds up storm waves.” Those can reach up to 15 meters, or 49 feet, he says. Although before you get too alarmed, know that the mean wave height on the Drake is rather less – four to five meters, or 13-16 feet. That’s still double what you’ll find in the Atlantic, by way of comparison.

    And it’s not just the winds making the waters rough – the Drake is basically one big surge of water.

    “The Southern Ocean is very stormy in general [but] in the Drake you’re really squeezing [the water] between the Antarctic and the southern hemisphere,” he adds. “That intensifies the storms as they come through.” He calls it a “funneling effect.”

    Then there’s the speed at which the water is thrashing through. The Drake is part of the most voluminous ocean current in the world, with up to 5,300 million cubic feet flowing per second. Squeezed into the narrow passage, the current increases, traveling west to east. Brearley says that at surface level, that current is less perceptible – just a couple of knots – so you won’t really sense it onboard. “But it does mean you’ll travel a bit more slowly,” he says.

    For oceanographers, he says, the Drake is “a fascinating place.”

    It’s home to what he calls “underwater mountains” below the surface – and the enormous current squeezing through the (relatively) narrow passage causes waves to break against them underwater. These “internal waves,” as he calls them, create vortices which bring colder water from the depths of the ocean higher up – important for the planet’s climate.

    “It’s not just turbulent at the surface, though obviously that’s what you feel the most – but it’s actually turbulent all the way through the water column,” says Brearley, who regularly crosses the Drake on a research ship. Does he get scared? “I don’t think I’ve ever been really fearful, but it can be very unpleasant in terms of how rough it is,” he says candidly.

    In 2010, tourist ship Clelia II declared an emergency after suffering engine failure in the Drake.

    One other key thing that makes the Drake so scary: our fear of the Drake itself.

    Brearley points out that until the Panama Canal opened in 1914, ships going from Europe to the west coast of the Americas had to dip round Cape Horn – the southern tip of South America – and then trundle up the Pacific coast.

    “Let’s say you were shipping goods from western Europe to California. You either had to offload them in New York and do the journey across the US, or you had to go all the way around,” he says. It wasn’t just large cargo ships, either; passenger ships made the same route.

    There’s even a monument at the tip of Cape Horn, in memorial of the more than 10,000 sailors who are believed to have died traveling through.

    “The routes between the south of South Africa and Australia, or Australia or New Zealand to Antarctica, don’t really lie on any major shipping routes,” says Brearley. “The reason it’s been so feared over the centuries is because the Drake is where ships really have to go. Other parts [of the Southern Ocean] can be avoided.”

    Captain Stanislas Devorsine regularly crosses the Drake.

    Navigating the Drake is an extremely complex task that demands humility and a side of fear, says Captain Stanislas Devorsine, one of three captains of Le Commandant Charcot, a polar vessel of adventure cruise company Ponant.

    “You have to have a healthy fear,” he says of the Drake. “It’s something that keeps you focused, alert, sensitive to the ship and the weather. You need to be aware that it can be dangerous – that it’s never routine.”

    Devorsine made his Drake debut as a captain over 20 years ago, sailing an icebreaker full of scientists over to Antarctica for a research stint.

    “We had very, very rough seas – more than 20 meter [66 feet] swells,” he says. “It was very windy, very rough.” Not that Ponant’s clients face anything like that. Devorsine is quick to point out that the comfort levels for a research ship – and the conditions it will sail in – are very different from those for a cruise.

    “We are extremely cautious – the ocean is stronger than us,” he says. “We’re not able to go in terrible weather. We go in rough seas but always with a big safety margin. We’re not gambling.”

    Even with that extra safety margin, though, he admits that crossing the Drake can be a hairy experience. “It can be very rough and very dangerous, so we take special care,” he says.

    “We have to choose the best time to cross the Drake. We have to adapt our course – sometimes we don’t head in our final direction, we alter the course to have a better angle with the waves. We might slow down to leave a low pressure path ahead, or speed up to pass one before it arrives.”

    The ‘Drake shake’ and broken plates

    Captains check the weather up to six times a day before departure to ensure a safe crossing.

    Of course, every time you get on a ship – whether it’s a simple ferry ride or a fancy cruise – the crew will already have meticulously planned the journey, checking everything from the weather to the tides and currents. But planning for a crossing of the Drake is on a whole new level.

    Weather forecasting has improved in the two decades since Devorsine’s first ride, he says – and these days crew start planning the voyage while passengers are making their way to South America from all over the globe.

    Sometimes they leave late; sometimes they head back early, to beat bad weather. Devorsine – who makes the return journey about six to eight times per year – estimates that the unusually calm “Drake lake” effect happens once in every 10 crossings, with particularly rough conditions (that “Drake shake”) once or twice in every 10 journeys.

    Of course, he knows what’s in store long before the passengers reach the ship.

    “We look ahead to have the best option to cross. Normally I look at the weather 10 days or a week before, just to have an idea of what it could be,” he says.

    “Then I check the forecast once per day, then two or three days before departure I start looking at it twice per day. If it’s going to be a challenging passage you look every six hours. If you have to adjust your departure time, then you look at it very closely to be very accurate.”

    His safety margin means that he’s calculating a route that will get you across not just alive, but also as comfortably as possible. Hearing an anecdote about broken crockery and furniture on another operator, he sighs, “That’s a bit too far for me.”

    “Before you have any issue with a storm, you have to keep a comfortable ship,” he says. The safety margin is to be sure that the guests will enjoy being in Antarctica, and that we won’t turn around because we have a problem… like injured people.”

    In extreme conditions, he orders extra weather advice from Ponant HQ, but if you’re imagining the staff on the bridge desperately radioing for advice as waves batter the ship, think again.

    “It would never happen to be in the middle of the Drake with bad conditions, needing assistance from headquarters because it would mean we didn’t have any safety margin before departure. When we cross and it’s going to be challenging, we have a big safety margin and the ship is not at all in danger.”

    They are in contact with headquarters with high level satellite antennae throughout the crossing, with both satellite and radio backup if needed – Devorsine says he can’t imagine ever losing contact, whatever the weather.

    Aurora Expeditions' Greg Mortimer ship has a patented bow to make a Drake crossing more stable.

    Devorsine, who now spends 90% of his time sailing in polar waters, feels at home on the Drake. “When I was a little child, I read books about the maritime adventures of sailors and polar heroes,” he says. “I was attracted by tough things – I like challenges. This is why I followed the path to be able to sail in these areas.”

    His first experience of the area was doing a “race around the world” in a sailboat as a youngster, heading south from his native France and rounding Cape Horn.

    “It was my dream because it’s difficult, dangerous and challenging,” he says.

    He’s not the only one. Some guests are drawn to Antarctica trips because of the tough journey. “I guess [they] are attracted by these areas [of the Southern Ocean] because it’s wild, it can be rough, and it’s a unique experience to go there,” he says.

    Not everone’s a thrill-seeker though. As managing director of Mundy Adventures, an adventure travel agency, Edwina Lonsdale is dealing with a clientele already used to discomfort – yet she says crossing the Drake is a “conversation topic” during booking.

    “it’s something we would raise to make sure people are completely aware of what they’re buying,” she says. “[Going to Antarctica] is a huge investment – you need to talk through every aspect and make sure nothing’s an absolute no.”

    Lonsdale advises that passengers nervous of feeling sick should choose their ship carefully. In the past, vessels heading to Antarctica tended to be uncomfortable metal boxes built to take a heavy beating. But in recent years, companies have introduced more technically advanced vessels: like Le Commandant Charcot, which was the world’s first passenger vessel with a Polar Class 2 hull – meaning it can go deeper and further into the ice in polar regions – when it debuted in 2021.

    Two of Aurora Expeditions’ ships, the Greg Mortimer and Sylvia Earle, use a patented inverted bow, designed to slide gently through the waves, reducing impact and vibration and improving stability, rather than “punching” through the water as a regular bow shape does, which makes the bow rock up and down.

    Lonsdale says that the fancier the vessel and the offerings onboard, the more distractions you’ll have if bad weather hits. Newer boats often have more spacious rooms and bigger windows so that you can watch the horizon, which helps to lessen seasickness. If the budget allows, she says, book a suite – you won’t just get more space, you’ll (likely) have floor-to-ceiling windows, too.

    But a word of advice – she recommends a careful selection not just of the right operator for you, but of the ship itself.

    “Just because a company has a fleet with a very modern ship doesn’t mean the whole fleet will be like that,” she says.

    At Cape Horn there's a monument marking the 10,000 sailors thought to have died navigating the Drake.

    So you’ve conquered your fears, booked your ticket and you’re about to set sail. Bad news: the captain is predicting the Drake shake. What to do?

    Hopefully you’ve come prepared. Most ships have ginger candies on offer during bad weather, but bring your own, as well as any anti-seasickness medication you want to take. Some passengers swear by acupressure “seeds”: tiny spikes, attached to your ears with a sticking plaster, designed to stimulate acupuncture points. Some ships offer acupuncture onboard; alternatively you can get it done beforehand, since the seeds last for some time.

    Devorsine’s top tips are to keep your eyes on the horizon, hold onto the handrail when walking around, be careful around doors, and “don’t jump out of bed.”

    Jamie Lafferty, a photographer who leads excursions on Antarctic cruises, says that of his 30-odd crossings, “I’ve had one where it felt like I was going to fall out of bed and that was the second time, way back in 2010 when there was a lot more guesswork involved. Crossing the Drake Passage is much, much more benign than it used to be thanks to the accuracy of modern forecasting models and stabilizers on more modern cruise ships. This doesn’t mean it’ll be smooth, but it’s vastly less chaotic and unpredictable than it used to be.”

    His top tip? “Take seasickness medication before heading out into open sea – once you start spewing, tablets aren’t going to be any use.”

    Warren Cairns, senior researcher at the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council of Italy, has a bit of extra help.

    “The only thing that works for me is going to the ship’s medic for a scopolamine patch,” he says. “It’s so rough, normal seasickness pills are just to get me to the infirmary.” Although he has it worse than the average tourist – on trips to Antarctica, their research ships have to pause for house to take samples. “The waves come from all sorts of directions as the thrusters keep it in place,” he says. “When you’re underway it’s a much more regular motion.”

    Lonsdale says it’s important not to fight it if you feel ill: “Just go to bed.” But equally, she says, don’t expect it: “It may be calm. You may not feel ill.”

    People suffer differently from seasickness she says. “The Pacific has very long, slow swells, Channel crossings [between the UK and France] have quite a bouncy experience. Lots of people say crossing the Drake in very rough weather is uneven enough to not make them ill at all.” On that plate-smashing crossing, for example, this reporter – who was watching 40-foot waves from the observation deck – never got sick.

    Remember that however it feels, you’re safe. “There’s an extraordinary level of safety in the build of those ships doing this,” says Lonsdale. Add in the safety margins that the likes of Devorsine build in, and you’re in uncomfortable, but not dangerous, territory.

    And if all else fails, remember why you’re there.

    “The motivation and excitement to discover those latitudes is very important to fight the seasickness,” says Devorsine. Lonsdale agrees.

    “If you were going to the moon, you’d expect the journey to be uncomfortable but it’d be worth it,” she says. “You just have to think, ‘This is what I need to get from one world to another.’”



    Source link

  • World’s largest iceberg — 3 times the size of New York City — “on the move” for the first time in 37 years

    World’s largest iceberg — 3 times the size of New York City — “on the move” for the first time in 37 years

    The world’s biggest iceberg — which is roughly three times the size of New York City — is “on the move” after being stuck to the ocean floor for 37 years, scientists confirmed Friday.

    Recent satellite images show the iceberg, called A23a, is now moving past the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula and headed toward the Southern Ocean, according to the British Antarctic Survey. 

    The iceberg, which spans almost 4,000 square kilometers (or 1,500 square miles) in area, split from the Antarctic coastline in 1986, but then became grounded in the Weddell Sea, the BBC reported.

    The British Antarctic Survey on Friday posted a time-lapse of satellite imagery, showing the iceberg’s movement.

    “Here’s its journey out of the Weddell Sea after being grounded on the sea floor after calving in August 1986,” the survey wrote.

    Before its calving in 1986, the colossal iceberg hosted a Soviet research station. It’s unclear why the iceberg is suddenly on the move again after 37 years.

    “I asked a couple of colleagues about this, wondering if there was any possible change in shelf water temperatures that might have provoked it, but the consensus is the time had just come,” Dr. Andrew Fleming, a remote sensing expert from the British Antarctic Survey, told the BBC. “It was grounded since 1986 but eventually it was going to decrease (in size) sufficiently to lose grip and start moving.”

    A23a will likely be ejected into what’s called the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, which will put it on a path that has become known as “iceberg alley,” the BBC reports. That is the same current of water that famed explorer Ernest Shackleton used in 1916 to make his storied escape from Antarctica after losing his ship, the Endurance. The legendary shipwreck was discovered off the coast of Antarctica just last year.

    Satellite imagery of the world's largest iceberg seen in Antarctica
    A satellite imagery of the world’s largest iceberg, named A23a, seen in Antarctica, November 15, 2023.  

    Courtesy of European Union/Copernicus Sentinel-3/Handout via REUTERS


    A23a’s movement comes about 10 months after a massive piece of Antarctica’s Brunt Ice Shelf — a chunk about the size of two New York Cities — broke free.  The Brunt Ice Shelf lies across the Weddell Sea from the site of the Larsen C ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula. Last year, the Larsen C ice shelf — which was roughly the size of New York City and was long considered to be stable — collapsed into the sea. 

    Stephen Smith

    Stephen Smith is a senior editor for CBSNews.com.

    Source link

  • Scientists discover hidden landscape

    Scientists discover hidden landscape

    Scientists revealed Tuesday that they had discovered a vast, hidden landscape of hills and valleys carved by ancient rivers that has been “frozen in time” under the Antarctic ice for millions of years.

    This landscape, which is bigger than Belgium, has remained untouched for potentially more than 34 million years, but human-driven global warming could threaten to expose it, the British and American researchers warned.

    “It is an undiscovered landscape — no one’s laid eyes on it,” Stewart Jamieson, a glaciologist at the UK’s Durham University and the lead author of the study, told AFP.

    “What is exciting is that it’s been hiding there in plain sight,” Jamieson added, emphasizing that the researchers had not used new data, only a new approach.

    The land underneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet is less well known than the surface of Mars, Jamieson said.

    The main way to “see” beneath it is for a plane overhead to send radio waves into the ice and analyze the echoes, a technique called radio-echo sounding.

    antarctica.jpg
    “We are now on course to develop atmospheric conditions similar to those that prevailed” between 14 to 34 million years ago, when it was three to seven degrees Celsius warmer (roughly seven to 13 degrees Fahrenheit) than currently, they wrote in the journal Nature Communications.

    Nature Communications


    But doing this across the continent — Antarctica is bigger than Europe — would pose a huge challenge.

    So the researchers used existing satellite images of the surface to “trace out the valleys and ridges” more than two kilometers below, Jamieson said.

    The undulating ice surface is a “ghost image” that drapes gently over these spikier features, he added.

    When combined with radio-echo sounding data, an image emerged of a river-carved landscape of plunging valleys and sharply peaked hills similar to some currently on the Earth’s surface.

    It was like looking out the window of a long-haul flight and seeing a mountainous region below, Jamieson said, comparing the landscape to the Snowdonia area of northern Wales.

    The area, stretching across 32,000 square kilometers (12,000 square miles), was once home to trees, forests and probably animals.

    But then the ice came along and it was “frozen in time,” Jamieson said.

    Exactly when sunshine last touched this hidden world is difficult to determine, but the researchers are confident it has been at least 14 million years.

    Jamieson said his “hunch” is that it was last exposed more than 34 million years ago, when Antarctica first froze over.

    Some of the researchers had previously found a city-size lake under the Antarctic ice, and the team believes there are other ancient landscapes down there yet to be discovered.

    Tipping point for a “runaway reaction”

    The authors of the study said global warming could pose a threat to their newly discovered landscape.

    “We are now on course to develop atmospheric conditions similar to those that prevailed” between 14 to 34 million years ago, when it was three to seven degrees Celsius warmer (roughly seven to 13 degrees Fahrenheit) than currently, they wrote in the journal Nature Communications.

    Jamieson emphasized that the landscape is hundreds of kilometers inland from the edge of the ice, so any possible exposure would be “a long way off.”

    The fact that retreating ice over past warming events — such as the Pliocene period, three to 4.5 million years ago — did not expose the landscape, was cause for hope, he added.

    But it remains unclear what the tipping point would be for a “runaway reaction” of melting, he said.

    The study was released a day after scientists warned that the melting of the neighboring West Antarctic Ice Sheet is likely to substantially accelerate in the coming decades, even if the world meets its ambitions to limit global warming.

    Earlier this year, a massive piece of Antarctica’s Brunt Ice Shelf — a chunk about the size of two New York Cities — broke free. 

    The Brunt Ice Shelf lies across the Weddell Sea from the site of another ice shelf that’s made headlines, the Larsen C ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula. Last year, the Larsen C ice shelf — which was roughly the size of New York City and was long considered to be stable — collapsed into the sea. 

    Glacier experts have warned that some of the world’s bigger glaciers could disappear within a generation without a dramatic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

    Traditionally, glacial ice builds up during the winter and provides vital water for crops, transit and millions of people on multiple continents during the summer as it slowly melts, feeding rivers.

    “They make it very visible,” Matthias Huss, the head of GLAMOS, an organization that monitors glaciers in Switzerland and collected the data for the academy’s report, told CBS News last month. “People can really understand what is happening, with huge glaciers disappearing and shrinking. This is much more impressive than seeing another graph with rising temperatures.”

    Source link

  • Antarctica is missing an Argentina-sized amount of sea ice — and scientists are scrambling to figure out why | CNN

    Antarctica is missing an Argentina-sized amount of sea ice — and scientists are scrambling to figure out why | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    As the Northern Hemisphere swelters under a record-breaking summer heat wave, much further south, in the depths of winter, another terrifying climate record is being broken. Antarctic sea ice has fallen to unprecedented lows for this time of year.

    Every year, Antarctic sea ice shrinks to its lowest levels towards the end of February, during the continent’s summer. The sea ice then builds back up over the winter.

    But this year scientists have observed something different.

    The sea ice has not returned to anywhere near expected levels. In fact it is at the lowest levels for this time of year since records began 45 years ago. The ice is around 1.6 million square kilometers (0.6 million square miles) below the previous winter record low set in 2022, according to data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).

    In mid-July, Antarctica’s sea ice was 2.6 million square kilometers (1 million square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 average. That is an area nearly as large as Argentina or the combined areas of Texas, California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado

    The phenomenon has been described by some scientists as off-the-charts exceptional – something that is so rare, the odds are that it only happens once in millions of years.

    But Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado Boulder, said that speaking in these terms may not be that helpful.

    “The game has changed,” he told CNN. “There’s no sense talking about the odds of it happening the way the system used to be, it’s clearly telling us that the system has changed.”

    Scientists are now scrambling to figure out why.

    The Antarctic is a remote, complex continent. Unlike the Arctic, where sea ice has been on a consistently downwards trajectory as the climate crisis accelerates, sea ice in the Antarctic has swung from record highs to record lows in the last few decades, making it harder for scientists to understand how it is responding to global heating.

    But since 2016, scientists have begun to observe a steep downwards trend. While natural climate variability affects the sea ice, many scientists say climate change may be a major driver for the disappearing ice.

    “The Antarctic system has always been highly variable,” Scambos said. “This [current] level of variation, though, is so extreme that something radical has changed in the past two years, but especially this year, relative to all previous years going back at least 45 years.”

    Several factors feed into sea ice loss, Scambos said, including the strength of the westerly winds around Antarctica, which have been linked to the increase of planet-heating pollution.

    “Warmer ocean temperatures north of the Antarctic Ocean boundary mixing into the water that’s typically somewhat isolated from the rest of the world’s oceans is also part of this idea as to how to explain this,” Scambos said.

    In late February of this year, Antarctic sea ice reached its lowest extent since records began, at 691,000 square miles.

    This winter’s unprecedented occurrence may indicate a long-term change for the isolated continent, Scambos said. “It is more likely than not that we won’t see the Antarctic system recover the way it did, say, 15 years ago, for a very long period into the future, and possibly ‘ever.’”

    Others are more cautious. “It’s a large departure from average but we know that Antarctic sea ice exhibits large year to year variability,” Julienne Stroeve, a senior scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center told CNN, adding “it’s too early to say if this is the new normal or not.”

    Sea ice plays a vital role. While it doesn’t directly affect sea level rise, as it’s already floating in the ocean, it does have indirect effects. Its disappearance leaves coastal ice sheets and glaciers exposed to waves and warm ocean waters, making them more vulnerable to melting and breaking off.

    A lack of sea ice could also have significant impacts on its wildlife, including krill on which many of the region’s whales feed, and penguins and seals that rely on sea ice for feeding and resting.

    More broadly, Antarctica’s sea ice contributes to the regulation of the planet’s temperature, meaning its disappearance could have cascading effects far beyond the continent.

    The sea ice reflects incoming solar energy back to space, when it melts, it exposes the darker ocean waters beneath which absorb the sun’s energy.

    Parts of Antarctica have been seeing alarming changes for a while. The Antarctic Peninsula, a spindly chain of icy mountains which sticks off the west side of the continent, is one of the fastest warming places in the Southern Hemisphere.

    Last year, scientists said West Antarctica’s vast Thwaites Glacier – also known as the “Doomsday Glacier” – was “hanging on by its fingernails” as the planet warms.

    Scientists have estimated global sea level rise could increase by around 10 feet if Thwaites collapsed completely, devastating coastal communities around the world.

    Scambos said that this winter’s record low level of sea ice is a very alarming signal.

    “In 2016, [Antarctic sea ice] took the first big down-turn. Since 2016, it’s remained low, and now the bottom has fallen out. Something major in a huge part of the planet is suddenly behaving differently from what we saw for the past 45 years.”

    Source link

  • Titan sub implosion highlights

    Titan sub implosion highlights

    The death of five people on the Titan sub highlights the surge in what some are calling “extreme tourism,” in which generally well-heeled travelers scale remote mountains, paraglide into canyons, ski down slopes accessible only by helicopter and embark on other exciting — but potentially risky — adventures.

    This summer, for example, a record 106,000 tourists are expected to set foot in Antarctica after crossing the Drake Passage, a stretch of violent sea between South America and Antarctica. The Nepalese government this year also granted a record number of permits to climb Mount Everest, despite concerns about overcrowding and a spike in deaths that put 2023 on track to be one of the deadliest for the world’s tallest mountain. 

    For $2,500, adventurers in search of warmer climes can book a week-long survival trek in the Guyanese jungle or go on a 10-day trip to the remote Solomon Islands, learning to fish and forage from the locals and then being transported to a desert island to put those skills to the test (cost: $42,000 and up.) Pelorus, a luxury travel company that arranged the Solomon Islands trip for a mother and her son, also offers customized experiences like trekking in Alaska ($19,600) or a three-week private-jet tour of the world ($178,000.)

    The adventure travel business was worth nearly $300 billion last year and is projected to hit $1 trillion in a decade, according to a report from consulting firm Grand View Research.

    The price of experience 

    Demand for adventure travel has shot up since COVID-19, according to Dan Richards, CEO of Global Rescue, a company that evacuates travelers in the event of a medical or other emergency. 

    “As opposed to sitting in a hotel somewhere and going to a museum or two, people want experiential travel — they want to go and actually do something,” he said.

    “I think we’re seeing people trading aspirational purchases,” Richards added. Where once people might have splurged on a Porsche, now “they’re saying, I’m not going to spend $100,000 on the car, I’m going to take five trips to Africa with my family.”

    African safaris have seen the fastest growth, Richards said, with coverage for safari trips up 75% from last year. Hiking and camping trips are up nearly 50%, in a continuation of pandemic-era trends, and demand for motorcycle tours has also increased.

    Along with rising disposable incomes and a growing desire for “authentic” experiences in an increasingly globalized and connected world, social media is also playing a role in the adventure travel boom, Richards believes.

    “People are definitely going after the bucket-list experiences,” he said.

    Carl Shephard, cofounder of Insider Expeditions, a boutique travel company, has also seen demand for his services skyrocket in the aftermath of the pandemic.

    “We’ve never been busier as a company,” he told CBS MoneyWatch.

    Shepherd described his typical clients as people in their 30s or 40s who “are tight on time and want to spend money in the most epic way possible.”

    The company last year organized a cruise from South America to Antarctica with Jimmy Buffett’s Coral Reefer Band; earlier this year, it brought 200 entrepreneurs on a spiritual journey up the Nile River. Clients frequently request space flights as well as trips to extremely remote islands.

    “We like to push the envelope in terms of experience, not in terms of safety,” he added.


    Investigation into cause of “catastrophic implosion” on Titanic sub underway

    03:14

    Still, the pursuit of adventure raises the risk that things can go wrong. 

    On Friday, when he spoke with CBS MoneyWatch, Richards said that Global Rescue was in the process of arranging transport for a traveler who had crashed his motorcycle in a remote part of Mongolia to a hospital in the country’s capital, Ulaanbaatar. 

    A day earlier, the company also evacuated three travelers from a paragliding expedition in the Kashmir region of the Karakoram, the rugged mountain chain that spans five Asian countries — one man who had a heart attack, a companion who injured himself rushing to his aid and a third person with severe gastrointestinal distress. 

    In a typical year, Richards said his company will help rescue between 2,000 and 3,000 travelers, most for medical reasons.

    “If you dream it, you can do it”

    The growth of extreme tourism also reflects the commercial opportunities in allowing the moneyed masses to engage in the kind of exploits once reserved for hardened professionals. 

    Blue Origin, the commercial space exploration company started by Jeff Bezos, touts its mission to fly “customer astronauts” to space (at a price ascending into the tens of millions of dollars), with the Amazon founder himself among those exploring the final frontier. And Virgin Galactic, the company launched by British billionaire Richard Branson to enable commercial spaceflight, declares in its marketing materials that “space belongs to everyone: the adventurous, the audacious and the curious.”

    OceanGate, the company that made the 21-foot sub that suffered what U.S. Coast Guard officials described as a “catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber,” charged $250,000 for an eight-day, seven-night excursion to see the wreckage of the Titanic. A three-day trip to “explore hydrothermal vents” in the Azores archipelago off Portugal also costs $250,000, according to the company’s website.

    OceanGate’s site also invites prospective clients to “follow in Jacques Cousteau’s footsteps and become an underwater explorer,” enticing them to “join the adventure of a lifetime.” 

    Such marketing pitches can attract customers unable to either properly assess the risks or withstand the hardships of what are by design often arduous, envelope-pushing journeys. 

    “We’re certainly seeing an influx of people who are not well suited to do these things,” said Global Rescue’s Richards. “One would think there would be some kind of test.”

    “A lot of the self-care and self-help message that people are receiving is, ‘If you dream it you can do it,’” he continued. “That kind of aspirational messaging is good for society overall but can be life-threatening if you take it too far.” 

    Patrick Luff, founder of the Texas-based Luff Law Firm, expressed concern that the growing popularity of adventure travel would attract fly-by-night operators that might cut corners on safety or security. After all, a traveler drawn in by a slick website advertising once-in-a-lifetime thrills can’t easily judge the strength of the company’s equipment or the training and knowledge of its staff.

    “If you have a huge demand for a risky behavior… you can get unsophisticated entrants into the market,” he said. “Whether that’s an inexperienced skydiving operation or a submarine company with a tin can and a dream, that’s what really becomes concerning.”

    Source link

  • Crucial Antarctic ocean circulation heading for collapse if planet-warming pollution remains high, scientists warn | CNN

    Crucial Antarctic ocean circulation heading for collapse if planet-warming pollution remains high, scientists warn | CNN


    Brisbane, Australia
    CNN
     — 

    Melting ice in the Antarctic is not just raising sea levels but slowing down the circulation of deep ocean water with vast implications for the global climate and for marine life, a new study warns.

    Led by scientists from the University of New South Wales and published Wednesday in the journal Nature, the peer-reviewed study modeled the impact of melting Antarctic ice on deep ocean currents that work to flush nutrients from the sea floor to fish near the surface.

    Three years of computer modeling found the Antarctic overturning circulation – also known as abyssal ocean overturning – is on track to slow 42% by 2050 if the world continues to burn fossil fuels and produce high levels of planet-heating pollution.

    A slow down is expected to speed up ice melt and potentially end an ocean system that has helped sustain life for thousands of years.

    “The projections we have make it look like the Antarctic overturning would collapse this century,” said Matthew England, deputy director of the Australian Research Council’s Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science, who coordinated the study.

    “In the past, these overturning circulations changed over the course of 1,000 years or so, and we’re talking about changes within a few decades. So it is pretty dramatic,” he said.

    Most previous studies have focused on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), the system of currents that carry warm water from the tropics into the North Atlantic. The cold, saltier water then sinks and flows south.

    Its Southern Ocean equivalent is less studied but does an important job moving nutrient-dense water north from Antarctica, past New Zealand and into the North Pacific Ocean, the North Atlantic and Indian Ocean, the report’s authors said in a briefing.

    The circulation of deep ocean water is considered vital for the health of the sea – and plays an important role in sequestering carbon absorbed from the atmosphere.

    According to the report, while a slowdown of the AMOC would mean the deep Atlantic Ocean would get colder, the slower circulation of dense water in the Antarctic means the deepest waters of the Southern Ocean will warm up.

    “One of the concerning things of this slowdown is that there can be feedback to further ocean warming at the base of the ice shelves around Antarctica. And that would lead to more ice melt, reinforcing or amplifying the original change,” England said.

    As global temperatures rise, Antarctic ice is expected to melt faster, but that doesn’t mean the circulation of deep water will increase – in fact the opposite, scientists said.

    In a healthy system, the cold and salty – or dense – consistency of melted Antarctic ice allows it to sink to the deepest layer of the ocean. From there it sweeps north, carrying carbon and higher levels of oxygen than might otherwise be present in water around 4,000 meters deep.

    As the current moves northward, it agitates deep layers of debris on the ocean floor – remains of decomposing sea life thick with nutrients – that feed the bottom of the food chain, scientists said.

    In certain areas, mostly south of Australia in the Southern Ocean and in the tropics, this nutrient-rich cold water moves toward the surface in a process called upwelling, distributing the nutrients to higher layers of the ocean, England said.

    However, Wednesday’s study found that as global temperatures warm, melting sea ice “freshens” the water around Antarctica, diluting its saltiness and raising its temperature, meaning it’s less dense and doesn’t sink to the bottom as efficiently as it once did.

    The report’s co-author, Steve Rintoul from Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership, said sea life in waters worldwide rely on nutrients brought back up to the surface, and that the Antarctic overturning is a key component of that upwelling of nutrients.

    “We know that nutrients exported from the Southern Ocean in other current systems support about three quarters of global phytoplankton production – the base of the food chain,” he said.

    “We’ve shown that the sinking of dense water near Antarctica will decline by 40% by 2050. And it’ll be sometime between 2050 and 2100 that we start to see the impacts of that on surface productivity.”

    England added: “People born today are going to be around then. So, it’s certainly stuff that will challenge societies in the future.”

    Fishing boats at a floating fish farm off Rongcheng, China.

    The report’s authors say the slowing of the Antarctic ocean overturning has other knock-on effects for the planet – for example, it could shift rain bands in the tropics by as much as 1,000 kilometers (621 miles).

    “Shut it down completely and you get this reduction of rainfall in one band south of the equator and an increase in the band to the north. So we could see impacts on rainfall in the tropics,” said England.

    Earlier this month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned in its latest report that the impacts of rising global temperatures were more severe than expected. Without immediate and deep changes, the world is hurtling toward increasingly dangerous and irreversible consequences of climate change, it added.

    The IPCC report found that the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels was still possible, but it’s becoming harder to achieve the longer the world fails to cut carbon pollution.

    England points out that the IPCC predictions don’t include ice melt from Antarctic ice sheets and shelves.

    “That’s a very significant component of change that’s already underway around Antarctica with more to come in the next few decades,” England said.

    Rintoul said the study was another urgent warning on top of all the ones that have come before it.

    “Even though the direct effect on fisheries through reduced nutrient supply might take decades to play out, we will commit ourselves to that future with the choices we make over the next decade.”

    Source link

  • Polar explorer, once diagnosed with terminal cancer, still lives for adventure

    Polar explorer, once diagnosed with terminal cancer, still lives for adventure

    Polar explorer isn’t slowed by cancer diagnosis


    Polar explorer, once diagnosed with terminal cancer, still lives for adventure

    01:36

    Crested Butte, Colorado — Eric Larsen lives for adventure.

    One of the world’s leading polar explorers, Larsen has touched the South Pole and the North Pole six times each. He’s also the only person to journey to both and Mount Everest in the same year.

    Had he ever considered slowing down?

    “My old answer would have been a very robust, ‘No way,’” Larsen told CBS News. “It was never enough. I’m not so sure now.”

    In 2021, at the age of 49, he was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer.

    “Trying to think about what those few years would be like, with my family and my young kids. To say it was difficult is an extreme understatement,” Larsen said.

    However, the prognosis was wrong. Larsen went through chemotherapy and radiation treatments. He also had 14 inches of his colon removed.

    During his treatment, he never thought he would do this again: pack his bags and head back to the North Pole. But that is exactly what he is doing. 

    “To see it again, when I thought I would never do anything again, for me, feels like the right thing to do,” Larsen said. 

    David Begnaud


    David Begnaud

    David Begnaud is the lead national correspondent for “CBS Mornings” based in New York City.

    Source link

  • Which EU politicians refused to label Russia a sponsor of terror?

    Which EU politicians refused to label Russia a sponsor of terror?

    Many on the far right and some on the left rejected the symbolic move to declare Moscow as a terrorist regime.

    The European Parliament on Wednesday adopted a resolution declaring Russia a state “sponsor of terrorism” over its war in Ukraine.

    “The deliberate attacks and atrocities committed by Russian forces and their proxies against civilians in Ukraine, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and other serious violations of international and humanitarian law amount to acts of terror and constitute war crimes,” the European Parliament said.

    In total, 494 members of the European Parliament (MEPS) voted in favour of the resolution, 58 were against and 44 abstained.

    The largely symbolic move is unlikely to make an impact, because the European Union – unlike the United States – does not have the legal framework to designate countries. Across the Atlantic, on the US list are North Korea, Syria, Cuba and Iran.

    The EU established its terror list in 2001, following the September 11 attacks in New York.

    It includes people, groups and entities and is reviewed at least every six months.

    ISIL (ISIS) and al-Qaeda armed groups are among those currently on the list.

    Which members voted against the resolution?

    Russia is the first country to be declared a state sponsor of terrorism by the European Parliament.

    However, members were not unanimous in their voting, with a larger proportion of the right-wing bloc of the Parliament against the association of Russia with terrorism.

    Twenty-six members of the far-right political group Identity and Democracy voted against designating Russia as a sponsor of terrorism.

    INTERACTIVE- European Parliament vote on labelling Russia terrorist state

    Here is a breakdown of votes by country, home country party, and member:

    These French politicians who voted against the resolution are all members of the National Rally or Rassemblement National, which is led by Marine Le Pen.

    • Mathilde Androuët
    • Jordan Bardella
    • Aurélia Beigneux
    • Dominique Bilde
    • Annika Bruna
    • Patricia Chagnon
    • Marie Dauchy
    • Jean-Paul Garraud
    • Catherine Griset
    • Jean-François Jalkh
    • France Jamet
    • Virginie Joron
    • Jean-Lin Lacapelle
    • Gilles Lebreton
    • Thierry Mariani
    • Philippe Olivier
    • André Rougé

    The following German politicians who voted against the resolution are all members of the far-right Alternative for Germany or Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD).

    • Christine Anderson
    • Gunnar Beck
    • Nicolaus Fest
    • Maximilian Krah
    • Joachim Kuhs
    • Guido Reil
    • Bernhard Zimniok

    Czech MEPs, who are members of the populist Freedom and Direct Democracy party, or Svoboda a přímá demokracie:

    One member of the centre-right European Conservatives and Reformist Group voted against the resolution:

    • Emmanouil  Fragkos, whose party in Greece is Greek Solution, or Elliniki Lusi-Greek Solution

    Twelve members from the centre-left Progressive Alliance of the Socialists and Democrats voted against the resolution.

    From Bulgaria – all with the centre-left Bulgarian Socialist Party:

    • Ivo Hristov
    • Tsvetelina Penkova
    • Sergei Stanishev
    • Petar Vitanov
    • Elena Yoncheva

    From Germany – all with the Social Democratic Party of Germany or Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD), which is the party of Chancellor Olaf Scholz:

    • Joachim Schuster
    • Dietmar Köster

    From Italy – these three politicians belong to Partito Democratico or the Democratic Party:

    • Pietro Bartolo
    • Andrea Cozzolino
    • Massimiliano Smeriglio

    From Slovakia:

    • Monika Beňová (SMER-Sociálna demokracia, or Direction – Slovak Social Democracy)
    • Robert Hajšel (Independent)

    Ten members of the Left group in the European Parliament voted against the resolution:

    From Belgium:

    • Marc Botenga (Parti du Travail de Belgique or Workers’ Party of Belgium –  which is a Marxist party)

    From Cyprus:

    • Niyazi Kizilyürek (Progressive Party of Working People – Left – New Forces)

    From Czech Republic:

    • Kateřina Konečná (Komunistická strana Čech a Moravy, or Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia)

    From Germany (​​DIE LINKE. party, or The Left party):

    • Özlem Demirel
    • Martin Schirdewan

    From Portugal (Partido Comunista Português, or Portuguese Communist Party – a Marxist-Leninist group)

    • Sandra Pereira
    • João Pimenta Lopes

    From Ireland (Independents 4 Change):

    From Spain:

    • Miguel Urbán Crespo (Anticapitalistas)

    Nine MEPs who are not affiliated with any political grouping also voted against the resolution:

    • Nicolas Bay (France – Reconquête!, or Reconquest – a nationalist party)
    • Francesca Donato (Italy – now an independent but formerly with the far-right Lega Nord, or Northern league headed by Matteo Salvini)
    • Marcel De Graaff (Netherlands – Forum voor Democratie, or Forum for Democracy, a right-wing populist party)
    • Lefteris Nikolaou-Alavanos (Greece – Communist Party of Greece)
    • Kostas Papadakis (Greece – Communist Party of Greece)
    • Miroslav Radačovský (Slovakia – Slovak PATRIOT, which is a right-wing party)
    • Milan Uhrík (Slovakia – Hnutie Republika or Republic – a far-right party)
    • Martin Sonneborn (Germany – Die Partei or The Party, which is a satirical party)
    • Tatjana Ždanoka (Latvia – Latvijas Krievu savienība or the Latvian Russian Union, which is backed by ethnic Russians and other Russian-speaking minorities)

    Source link