NOAA: Antarctic ozone hole remains static 2014

Ozone concentrations above Antarctica on Sept. 11, 2014. 

Credit: NASA

The Antarctic ozone hole reached its annual peak size on Sept. 11, according to scientists from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The size of this year's hole was 24.1 million square kilometers (9.3 million square miles), an area roughly the size of North America.

The single-day maximum area was similar to that in 2013, which reached 24.0 million square kilometers (9.3 million square miles).

The largest single-day ozone hole ever recorded by satellite was 29.9 million square kilometers (11.5 million square miles) on Sept. 9, 2000.

Overall, the 2014 ozone hole is smaller than the large holes of the 1998–2006 period, and is comparable to 2010, 2012, and 2013.

With the increased atmospheric chlorine levels present since the 1980s, the Antarctic ozone hole forms and expands during the Southern Hemisphere spring (August and September).

The ozone layer helps shield life on Earth from potentially harmful ultraviolet radiation that can cause skin cancer and damage plants.

The Montreal Protocol agreement beginning in 1987 regulated ozone depleting substances, such as chlorine-containing chlorofluorocarbons and bromine-containing halons.

The 2014 level of these substances over Antarctica has declined about 9 percent below the record maximum in 2000.

"Year-to-year weather variability significantly impacts Antarctica ozone because warmer stratospheric temperatures can reduce ozone depletion," said Paul A. Newman, chief scientist for atmospheres at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

"The ozone hole area is smaller than what we saw in the late-1990s and early 2000s, and we know that chlorine levels are decreasing. However, we are still uncertain about whether a long-term Antarctic stratospheric temperature warming might be reducing this ozone depletion."

Antarctic Sea Ice Reaches New Record Maximum - Video

This year, Antarctic sea ice reached a record maximum extent while the Arctic reached a minimum extent in the ten lowest since satellite records began. Why are these trends going in opposite directions?

Image Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Joy Ng

Sea ice surrounding Antarctica reached a new record high extent this year, covering more of the southern oceans than it has since scientists began a long-term satellite record to map sea ice extent in the late 1970s.

The upward trend in the Antarctic, however, is only about a third of the magnitude of the rapid loss of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean.

The new Antarctic sea ice record reflects the diversity and complexity of Earth’s environments, said NASA researchers.

Claire Parkinson, a senior scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, has referred to changes in sea ice coverage as a microcosm of global climate change.

Just as the temperatures in some regions of the planet are colder than average, even in our warming world, Antarctic sea ice has been increasing and bucking the overall trend of ice loss.

“The planet as a whole is doing what was expected in terms of warming. Sea ice as a whole is decreasing as expected, but just like with global warming, not every location with sea ice will have a downward trend in ice extent,” Parkinson said.

Since the late 1970s, the Arctic has lost an average of 20,800 square miles (53,900 square kilometers) of ice a year; the Antarctic has gained an average of 7,300 square miles (18,900 sq km).

On Sept. 19 this year, for the first time ever since 1979, Antarctic sea ice extent exceeded 7.72 million square miles (20 million square kilometers), according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. The ice extent stayed above this benchmark extent for several days.

The average maximum extent between 1981 and 2010 was 7.23 million square miles (18.72 million square kilometers).

The single-day maximum extent this year was reached on Sept. 20, according to NSIDC data, when the sea ice covered  7.78 million square miles (20.14 million square kilometers).

This year's five-day average maximum was reached on Sept. 22, when sea ice covered 7.76 million square miles (20.11 million square kilometers), according to NSIDC.

On Sept. 19, 2014, the five-day average of Antarctic sea ice extent exceeded 20 million square kilometers for the first time since 1979, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). 

The red line shows the average maximum extent from 1979-2014.

Image Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio/Cindy Starr

A warming climate changes weather patterns, said Walt Meier, a research scientist at Goddard.

Sometimes those weather patterns will bring cooler air to some areas, and in the Antarctic, where sea ice circles the continent and covers such a large area, it doesn’t take that much additional ice extent to set a new record.

“Part of it is just the geography and geometry. With no northern barrier around the whole perimeter of the ice, the ice can easily expand if conditions are favorable,” he said.

Researchers are investigating a number of other possible explanations as well. One clue, Parkinson said, could be found around the Antarctic Peninsula, a finger of land stretching up toward South America.

There, the temperatures are warming, and in the Bellingshausen Sea just to the west of the peninsula the sea ice is shrinking.

Beyond the Bellingshausen Sea and past the Amundsen Sea, lies the Ross Sea, where much of the sea ice growth is occurring.

Read the full article here

ESA GOCE and NASA GRACE detect Gravity Anomaly in Antarctic Ice Loss

Changes in Earth’s gravity field resulting from loss of ice from West Antarctica between November 2009 and June 2012 (mE = 10–12 s–2). 

 A combination of data from ESA’s GOCE mission and NASA’s Grace satellites shows the ‘vertical gravity gradient change’. 

Credit: ESA

Although not designed to map changes in Earth's gravity over time, ESA's extraordinary satellite has shown that the ice lost from West Antarctica over the last few years has left its signature.

Artist rendering of ESA's GOCE satellite in orbit. 

Credit: ESA

More than doubling its planned life in orbit, GOCE spent four years measuring Earth's gravity in unprecedented detail.

Scientists are now armed with the most accurate gravity model ever produced.

This is leading to a much better understanding of many facets of our planet, from the boundary between Earth's crust and upper mantle to the density of the upper atmosphere.

The strength of gravity at Earth's surface varies subtly from place to place owing to factors such as the planet's rotation and the position of mountains and ocean trenches.

Changes in the mass of large ice sheets can also cause small local variations in gravity.

Recently, the high-resolution measurements from GOCE over Antarctica between November 2009 and June 2012 have been analysed by scientists from the German Geodetic Research Institute, Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, the Jet Propulsion Lab in USA and the Technical University of Munich in Germany.

Remarkably, they found that the decrease in the mass of ice during this period was mirrored in GOCE's measurements, even though the mission was not designed to detect changes over time.

Using gravity data to assess changes in ice mass is not new.

The NASA, DLR (Germany) Grace satellite, which was designed to measure change, has been providing this information for over 10 years.

However, measurements from Grace are much coarser than those of GOCE, so they cannot be used to look at features such as Antarctica's smaller 'catchment basins'.

For scientific purposes, the Antarctic ice sheet is often divided into catchment basins so that comparative measurements can be taken to work out how the ice in each basin is changing and discharging ice to the oceans. Some basins are much bigger than others.

By combining GOCE's high-resolution measurements with information from Grace, scientists can now look at changes in ice mass in small glacial systems, offering even greater insight into the dynamics of Antarctica's different basins.



They have found that that the loss of ice from West Antarctica between 2009 and 2012 caused a dip in the gravity field over the region.

In addition, GOCE data could be used to help validate satellite altimetry measurements for an even clearer understanding of ice-sheet and sea-level change.

Using gravity data to assess changes in ice mass is not new. The NASA, DLR (Germany) Grace satellite, which was designed to measure change, has been providing this information for over 10 years.

However, measurements from Grace are much coarser than those of GOCE, so they cannot be used to look at features such as Antarctica's smaller 'catchment basins'.

For scientific purposes, the Antarctic ice sheet is often divided into catchment basins so that comparative measurements can be taken to work out how the ice in each basin is changing and discharging ice to the oceans. Some basins are much bigger than others.

By combining GOCE's high-resolution measurements with information from Grace, scientists can now look at changes in ice mass in small glacial systems, offering even greater insight into the dynamics of Antarctica's different basins.

They have found that that the loss of ice from West Antarctica between 2009 and 2012 caused a dip in the gravity field over the region.

In addition, GOCE data could be used to help validate satellite altimetry measurements for an even clearer understanding of ice-sheet and sea-level change.

Using 200 million measurements collected by ESA’s CryoSat mission between January 2011 and January 2014, researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany have discovered that the Antarctic ice sheet is shrinking in volume by 125 cubic kilometres a year. 

The study, which was published in a paper published on 20 August 2014 in the European Geosciences Union’s Cryosphere journal, also showed that Greenland is losing about 375 cubic kilometres a year. 

Credit: ESA

ESA's CryoSat satellite, which carries a radar altimeter, has recently shown that since 2009 the rate at which ice is been lost from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet every year has increased by a factor of three.

And, between 2011 and 2014, Antarctica as a whole has been shrinking in volume by 125 cubic kilometres a year.

Johannes Bouman from the German Geodetic Research Institute said, "We are now working in an interdisciplinary team to extend the analysis of GOCE's data to all of Antarctica.

"This will help us gain further comparison with results from CryoSat for an even more reliable picture of actual changes in ice mass."

This new research into GOCE's gravity data revealing ice loss over time is being carried out through ESA's Earth Observation Support to Science Element.

Extremes in Antarctic ozone holes not matched in the Arctic

Ozone hole during Oct. 7, 2008, as measured by the Scanning Imaging Absorption Spectrometer for Atmospheric Cartography (SCIAMACHY) atmospheric sensor onboard ESA's Envisat. 

Credit: KNMI /ESA

Since the discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole, scientists, policymakers, and the public have wondered whether we might someday see a similarly extreme depletion of ozone over the Arctic.

But a new MIT study finds some cause for optimism: Ozone levels in the Arctic haven't yet sunk to the extreme lows seen in Antarctica, in part because international efforts to limit ozone-depleting chemicals have been successful.

"While there is certainly some depletion of Arctic ozone, the extremes of Antarctica so far are very different from what we find in the Arctic, even in the coldest years," says Susan Solomon, the Ellen Swallow Richards Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Science at MIT, and lead author of a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Frigid temperatures can spur ozone loss because they create prime conditions for the formation of polar stratospheric clouds.

When sunlight hits these clouds, it sparks a reaction between chlorine from chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), human-made chemicals once used for refrigerants, foam blowing, and other applications, ultimately destroying ozone.

"A success story of science and policy"
After the ozone-attacking properties of CFCs were discovered in the 1980s, countries across the world agreed to phase out their use as part of the 1987 Montreal Protocol treaty.

While CFCs are no longer legally in use, those gasses emitted in previous years, remain active in the atmosphere.

As a result, atmospheric concentrations have peaked and are now slowly declining, but it will be several decades before CFCs are totally eliminated from the environment; meaning there is still some risk of ozone depletion caused by CFCs.

"It's really a success story of science and policy, where the right things were done just in time to avoid broader environmental damage," says Solomon, who made some of the first measurements in Antarctica that pointed toward CFCs as the primary cause of the ozone hole.

To obtain their findings, the researchers used balloon and satellite data from the heart of the ozone layer over both polar regions.

They found that Arctic ozone levels did drop significantly during an extended period of unusual cold in the spring of 2011.

While this dip did depress ozone levels, the decrease was nowhere near as drastic as the nearly complete loss of ozone in the heart of the layer seen in many years in Antarctica.

The MIT team's work also helps to show chemical reasons for the differences, demonstrating that ozone loss in Antarctica is closely associated with reduced levels of nitric acid in air that is colder than that in the Arctic.

"We'll continue to have cold years with extreme Antarctic ozone holes for a long time to come," Solomon says.

"We can't be sure that there will never be extreme Arctic ozone losses in an unusually cold future year, but so far, so good, and that's good news."

More information: "Fundamental differences between Arctic and Antarctic ozone depletion," by Susan Solomon, Jessica Haskins, Diane J. Ivy, and Flora Min. PNAS, 2014. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1319307111

Antarctic iSTAR mission: First leg at Pine Island Glacier accomplished

Dr Stephen Cornford calibrating his instruments in the field. 

Credit: David Vaughan

The iSTAR science programme brings together multi-disciplinary teams to investigate ice loss from Pine Island Glacier, the biggest single contributor to worldwide sea level rise.

The next step of the programme, an ocean investigation, is now underway.

Launched last November, iSTAR is an ambitious scientific programme, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), uniting leading scientists from 11 UK universities and from British Antarctic Survey (BAS).

Using state-of-the-art technologies to measure changes to the flow and thickness of glaciers, and to investigate the role that the ocean plays in transporting warm water beneath ice shelves, this multi-disciplinary mission is the first of its kind for the UK.

Scientists recognise the urgent need to understand the causes and impact of recent rapid ice loss from Pine Island Glacier.

The impact on global sea-level rise could be significant – this mission is designed to find out just how significant.

This new knowledge about its stability is critical for making better predictions about how the ocean and ice will respond to future environmental change.

The team travelled 1,500km (932 miles) by 'tractor train' across the glacier ice, taking samples and measurements as they went.

This is the first time in recent British history that this method of crossing the ice has been undertaken.

Sophisticated equipment, supplies and fuel were loaded on to specially designed rubber mats and towed by huge tractors.

A 'caboose' (a caravan-like office and living space) housed technical equipment and provided a warm space for the science team to plan their days' work.

A pisten bully towing the caboose, equipment and fuel from one campsite to another. 

Credit: Damon Davies

Programme lead Dr Andy Smith from British Antarctic Survey said: "The ice-traverse has been a huge success. We visited all the proposed sites on the route, conducted considerably more experiments than had been originally planned and completed much quicker than expected."

"Our success has been thanks to the excellent support we have received, the sheer hard work and dedication of all the traverse members and some good luck with the weather."

"We are very pleased to have successfully completed this year's deep-field work."

This next leg of the mission will focus on retrieving moorings, tagging seals, and performing further measurements using an Autosub (autonomous submarine) operated by the National Oceanography Centre (NOC), ocean gliders, and onboard instrumentation to analyse how much the ocean is contributing to the retreat of Pine Island Glacier from below the ice shelf.

The ship will be deployed in Pine Island Bay until early March.

NOC's Autosub3 is ready to launch in front of the Pine Island Glacier in the Western Antarctic. 

In a mission lasting 36 hours it ran 60km under the ice shelf, into a cave, topped with ice up to 1000 m thick.

NASA Aura Image: Antarctic ozone hole monitoring report

The Antarctic ozone hole reached its maximum single-day area for 2013 on Sept. 16. 

The ozone hole (purple and blue) is the region over Antarctica with total ozone at or below 220 Dobson units (a common unit for measuring ozone concentration). 

Image Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

The ozone hole that forms each year in the stratosphere over Antarctica was slightly smaller in 2013 than average in recent decades, according to NASA satellite data.

The ozone hole is a seasonal phenomenon that starts to form during the Antarctic spring (August and September).

The September-October 2013 average size of the hole was 8.1 million square miles (21 million square kilometers).

For comparison, the average size measured since the mid-1990s when the annual maximum size stopped growing is 8.7 million square miles (22.5 million square kilometers).

However, the size of the hole in any particular year is not enough information for scientists to determine whether a healing of the hole has begun.

"There was a lot of Antarctic ozone depletion in 2013, but because of above average temperatures in the Antarctic lower stratosphere, the ozone hole was a bit below average compared to ozone holes observed since 1990," said Paul Newman, an atmospheric scientist and ozone expert at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

The ozone hole forms when the sun begins rising again after several months of winter darkness.

Polar-circling winds keep cold air trapped above the continent, and sunlight-sparked reactions involving ice clouds and chlorine from manmade chemicals begin eating away at the ozone.

Most years, the conditions for ozone depletion ease before early December when the seasonal hole closes.

Levels of most ozone-depleting chemicals in the atmosphere have gradually declined as the result of the 1987 Montreal Protocol, an international treaty to protect the ozone layer by phasing out production of ozone-depleting chemicals.

As a result, the size of the hole has stabilized, with variation from year to year driven by changing meteorological conditions.



Daily images from Jul. 1 to Oct. 15 show the evolution of the 2013 ozone hole. The ozone hole maximum occurred on Sept. 16, 2013. 

Image Credit: NASA/Robert Simmon/Ozone Hole Watch

The single-day maximum area this year was reached on Sept. 16 when the maximum area reached 9.3 million square miles (24 million square kilometers), about equal to the size of North America.

The largest single-day ozone hole since the mid-1990s was 11.5 million square miles (29.9 million square kilometers) on Sept. 9, 2000.

Science teams from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have been monitoring the ozone layer from the ground and with a variety of instruments on satellites and balloons since the 1970s.

These ozone instruments capture different aspects of ozone depletion. The independent analyses ensure that the international community understands the trends in this critical part of Earth's atmosphere.

The resulting views of the ozone hole have differences in the computation of the size of the ozone hole, its depth, and record dates.

NASA observations of the ozone hole during 2013 were produced from data supplied by the Ozone Monitoring Instrument on NASA's Aura satellite and the Ozone Monitoring and Profiler Suite instrument on the NASA-NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite.

Long-term satellite ozone-monitoring instruments have included the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer, the second generation Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet Instrument, the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment series of instruments, and the Microwave Limb Sounder.

Scientific Consensus on Human cause of Climate Change

Giant tabular icebergs surrounded by ice drift in Vincennes Bay in the Australian Antarctic Territory on January 11, 2008. 

A review of thousands of studies published over 21 years found "overwhelming" and growing consensus among scientists that humans are mostly to blame for global warming, its authors said Thursday.

A comprehensive analysis of peer-reviewed articles on the topic of global warming and climate change has revealed an overwhelming consensus among scientists that recent warming is human-caused.

John Cook

The study is the most comprehensive yet and identified 4000 summaries, otherwise known as abstracts, from papers published in the past 21 years that stated a position on the cause of recent global warming – 97 per cent of these endorsed the consensus that we are seeing man-made, or anthropogenic, global warming (AGW) Led by John Cook at the University of Queensland, the study has been published today, Thursday 16 May, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters.

The study went one step further, asking the authors of these papers to rate their entire paper using the same criteria.

Over 2000 papers were rated and among those that discussed the cause of recent global warming, 97 per cent endorsed the consensus that it is caused by humans.

The findings are in stark contrast to the public's position on global warming; a 2012 poll revealed that more than half of Americans either disagree, or are unaware, that scientists overwhelmingly agree that the Earth is warming because of human activity.

John Cook said: "Our findings prove that there is a strong scientific agreement about the cause of climate change, despite public perceptions to the contrary."

"There is a gaping chasm between the actual consensus and the public perception. It's staggering given the evidence for consensus that less than half of the general public think scientists agree that humans are causing global warming."

"This is significant because when people understand that scientists agree on global warming, they're more likely to support policies that take action on it."

More information:
Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature, by John Cook, Dana Nuccitelli, Sarah A Green, Mark Richardson, Bärbel Winkler, Rob Painting, Robert Way, Peter Jacobs and Andrew Skuce, 2013 Environ. Res. Lett. 8 024024. iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article

Antarctic and Arctic sea-ice revealed in 1964 satellite maps

The NSIDC project examined almost 40,000 images from the Nimbus-1 archive to produce the September 1964 maps of Arctic (L) and Antarctic (R) sea-ice extent.

The earliest satellite maps of Arctic and Antarctic sea-ice have been assembled by scientists.

They were made using data from Nasa's Nimbus-1 spacecraft, which was launched in 1964 to test new technologies for imaging weather systems from orbit.

The satellite's old pictures have now been re-analysed to determine the extent of the marine ice at the poles in the September of that year.

Regular Earth Observation mapping from space did not begin until 1978.

One key finding is that marine floes around the White Continent in the 1960s were probably just as extensive as they are today.

The new snapshot, published in The Cryosphere journal, therefore helps put current ice conditions into a longer-term context, say researchers at the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC).

It is also just a fascinating story of how old scientific data can be given a new lease of life.

Matching up
The Nimbus-1 satellite was a short-lived mission that observed the Earth's clouds in black and white video, which it transmitted to the ground as an analogue TV signal.

Those transmissions were then photographed on to 35mm film and archived. The NSIDC team had to pull the canisters containing the original film out of storage to perform the re-analysis.

NSIDC
"The canisters were kind of forgotten, almost lost in time, until about four years ago when they were found and it was realised they might contain some useful, interesting data," explained the NSIDC's Dr Walt Meier.

"We then got some funding to digitise the data and analyse it. I was sceptical at first; the quality of the data is nothing like what we can get now.

Dr Walt Meier

"But it turned out to be really good, especially in the Antarctic, where it was surprisingly easy to determine the ice edge. Don't get me wrong, it was certainly a challenge," he told reporters.

"One of the things you have to do is geo-locate the data - you have to know where you are looking. There was some information in there to help us, but we had to take care in matching up the images and locating them on the Earth as accurately as we could."

Although the satellite worked for just three weeks, it covered a period of key interest to polar scientists.

Read more of this article here

NASA Icebridge Mission: P-3B Starts the Day

On March 21, 2013, the P-3B waits outside the hangar at Thule Air Base with the Greenland Ice sheet in the background.

IceBridge, a six-year NASA mission, is the largest airborne survey of Earth's polar ice ever flown. 

It will yield an unprecedented three-dimensional view of Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets, ice shelves and sea ice. 

These flights will provide a yearly, multi-instrument look at the behaviour of the rapidly changing features of the Greenland and Antarctic ice.

Data collected during IceBridge will help scientists bridge the gap in polar observations between NASA's Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) -- in orbit since 2003 -- and ICESat-2, planned for early 2016. 

ICESat stopped collecting science data in 2009, making IceBridge critical for ensuring a continuous series of observations.

IceBridge will use airborne instruments to map Arctic and Antarctic areas once a year. IceBridge flights are conducted in March-May over Greenland and in October-November over Antarctica. Other smaller airborne surveys around the world are also part of the IceBridge campaign.

Image Credit: NASA/Goddard/Michael Studinger

Antarctic: Ice Sheet warming Faster

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet, whose melt may be responsible for 10 percent of the sea-level rise caused by climate change, is warming twice as quickly as previously thought, a recent study shows.

A re-analysis of temperature records from 1958 to 2010 revealed an increase of 2.4 degrees Celsius (36.3 degrees Fahrenheit) over the period -- three times the average global rise.

The increase was nearly double what previous research had suggested, and meant this was one of the fastest-warming regions on Earth, according to paper co-author David Bromwich of the Byrd Polar Research Center.

"Our record suggests that continued summer warming in West Antarctica could upset the surface balance of the ice sheet, so that the region could make an even bigger contribution to sea-level rise than it already does," he said.

Scientists believe the shrinking of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is responsible for about 10 percent of global warming-related sea-level rise, which if unchecked threatens to flood many coastal cities within a few generations.

The sheet, a huge mass of ice up to four kilometres (2.5 miles) thick that covers the land surface and stretches into the sea, is melting faster than any other part of Antarctica.

Giant Red Crabs invade the Antartic Abyss

Huge crabs more than a metre across have invaded the Antarctic abyss, wiped out the local wildlife and now threaten to ruin ecosystems that have evolved over 14 million years.

Three years ago, researchers predicted that as the deep waters of the Southern Ocean warmed, king crabs would invade Antarctica within 100 years.

But video taken by a remotely operated submersible shows that more than a million Neolithodes yaldwyni have already colonised Palmer Deep, a basin that forms a hollow in the Antarctic Peninsula continental shelf.

They are laying waste to the landscape. Video footage taken by the submersible shows how the crabs prod, probe, gash and puncture delicate sediments with the tips of their long legs.

"This is likely to alter sediment processes, such as the rate at which organic matter is buried, which will affect the diversity of animal communities living in the sediments," says Craig Smith of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, whose team discovered the scarlet invaders.

Hungry invaders

The crabs also appear to have a voracious appetite. Echinoderms – sea urchins, sea lilies, sea cucumbers, starfish and brittle stars – have vanished from occupied areas, and the number of species in colonised areas is just a quarter of that in areas that have escaped the invasion.

"[Echinoderms] constitute a significant proportion of the large animals on the seafloor in many Antarctic shelf habitats," says Smith.

The crabs come from further north and moved in as Antarctic waters have warmed, probably swept into Palmer Deep as larvae in warm ocean currents. 

They now occupy the deepest regions of Palmer Deep, between 1400 and 950 metres. In 1982, the minimum temperature there was 1.2 °C – too cold for king crabs – but by last year it had risen to a balmier 1.47 °C.

Melting ice sheets tend to make shallower waters in Antarctica cooler than deeper ones. There were no king crabs at depths of 850 metres or less, suggesting that these waters are still too cold for them. But with waters warming so rapidly, they could spread to regions as shallow as 400 metres within as little as 20 years, says Smith.

Russia To Track Glonass Satellites From Antarctic Station

The Academician Fyodorov scientific research vessel has arrived at the Russian Antarctic outpost of Bellingshausen on a mission to set up a station for tracking the GLONASS navigation satellites, the Voice of Russia reported.

Glonass - the Global Navigation Satellite System - is the Russian equivalent of the U.S. Global Positioning System, or GPS, and is designed for both military and civilian use. Both systems allow users to determine their positions to within a few meters.

Russia currently has a total of 22 Glonass satellites in orbit, but only 16 of them are operational.

Three satellites have been temporarily withdrawn from the grouping over technical problems, one satellite will be decommissioned and two new satellites are expected to enter service in the near future.

The Glonass system requires a constellation of 18 operational satellites for continuous navigation services covering the entire territory of Russia and at least 24 satellites to provide navigation services worldwide.

A total of 9.9 billion rubles ($360 million) was allocated for the Glonass project from the federal budget in 2007, and 4.7 billion rubles ($170 million) in 2006.

An additional $2.6 billion was allocated to develop the system in September 2008.

Galileo
ESA and the Europeans are also entering the global GPS market with their Galileo constellation.

In January 2010, Mr René Oosterlinck, ESA’s Director of the Galileo Programme and Navigation-related Activities, signed the first three contracts for the Galileo full operational capability phase. This event marks the start of building the Galileo operational infrastructure