The Anthropocene defined as an event, not an epoch

Professor Phil Gibbard writes: What is the Anthropocene? When did it start? Ask ten experts and you're likely to get ten different answers. The solution is to define the Anthropocene as a geological event: the aggregated effects of human activities that are transforming the Earth system and altering biodiversity, producing a substantial record in sedimentary strata and in human-modified ground.

This definition, published in the Geoscience journal Episodes, is applicable across academic fields and explicitly recognises that the Anthropocene interval varies in time and space.

Stability of Antarctic Ice Shelves

Scott Polar Research Institute's Ian Willis and Becky Dell are on their way to Antarctica to retrieve data from instruments that were set up two years ago. They are currently quarantining in the Falkland Islands with their colleague Laura Stevens (University of Oxford) waiting for runway conditions at the British Antarctic Survey's Rothera base to improve, before making their onward journey.

Working with colleagues Alison Banwell (University of Colorado Boulder) and Doug MacAyeal (University of Chicago) the team will use the data to examine in detail how much melting occurs across the ice shelf each summer, how much of that water ponds up in lakes, and how that melting and ponding causes the floating ice shelf to bend and possibly crack. The team's findings should improve our understanding of how ice shelves fracture and break up. This may be more likely in the future as melting around Antarctica's periphery increases, ultimately due to global warming.

SPRI library forges new links with Arctic Russia

Eleanor Peers in partnership with Anastasiia Shnaider has arranged an exchange of resources between the SPRI library and the National Library of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug (YaNAO) in Arctic Russia. Thanks to this exchange SPRI will acquire books from YaNAO that are unavailable anywhere else in the UK, if not Europe. Our readers will be able to learn about the diverse histories and cultures of YaNAO, an important industrial region, and the homeland of several Indigenous communities such as the Nenets, Khanty and Komi peoples. In return, the National Library will receive access to the Polar Record.

Through the project we are making new links with YaNAO's Academic Centre for the Study of the Arctic, who will be sending us their work through this exchange. The Academic Centre carries out crucial multidisciplinary research into YaNAO and the Russian Arctic. We hope these additions to our collection will stimulate new collaborations between YaNAO and the UK.

Spectacular ice age landscapes beneath the North Sea discovered using 3D seismic reflection technology

PhD student James Kirkham has led a study, along with Neil Arnold and Julian Dowdeswell from SPRI, which used cutting edge 3D seismic reflection technology to discover spectacular ice age landscapes beneath the North Sea.

So called tunnel valleys, buried hundreds of metres beneath the seafloor in the North Sea are remnants of huge rivers that were the 'plumbing system' of the ancient ice sheets as they melted in response to rising air temperatures.

These ancient structures provide clues to how ice sheets react to a warming climate. The findings are published this week (9 September) in the journal Geology.

More information can be found on the British Antarctic Survey website, along with BBC News.

New study investigates nineteenth-century science transfer and expertise in Arctic exploration

In a new research paper published in the British Journal for the History of Science, Dr Nanna Kaalund and Dr John Woitkowitz of the ERC Arctic Cultures research group, based at the Scott Polar Research Institute, investigate the history of nineteenth-century scientific networks and expertise in the organization of expeditions to the central Arctic Ocean.