Scott Polar Research InstituteRecent news
# Ice sheets can retreat faster than previously thought possible
6th April, 2023
SPRI-based researchers Drs. Frazer Christie, Sasha Montelli, Prof. Julian Dowdeswell and Evelyn Dowdeswell have published research showing that ice sheets are capable of retreating much faster than previously thought possible.
The research, led by Cambridge Geography and SPRI alumnus Dr. Christine Batchelor of Newcastle University, analysed more than 7,600 subtle landforms called 'corrugation ridges' across the mid-Norwegian seafloor. These landforms revealed that a former ice sheet underwent pulses of rapid retreat totalling up to 600 meters per day at the end of the last Ice Age. This rate is up to 20 times faster than present-day rates of ice-sheet retreat observed from satellites, and suggests that similarly rapid retreat could occur across flat-bedded areas of the Antarctic Ice Sheet in the future.
The research is published as an article in the journal Nature, and further information can be found in the Cambridge University press release.
# SPRI Review 2022
5th April, 2023
SPRI Review 2022 is now available online. SPRI Review is the Annual Report issued by the Scott Polar Research Institute, giving information on the Institute's activities over the past year.
# New study finds flow of the Greenland Ice Sheet more complex than thought
21st February, 2023
Researchers in the Department of Geography and the Scott Polar Research Institute have identified a highly variable layer of 'warm' basal ice to exert strong control on the flow of the Greenland Ice Sheet.
The basal ice layer is highly deformable and up to 70 m thick in topographic depressions where its deformation explains 90% of the ice sheet's total motion. To study where the basal ice layer forms and how it evolves, the researchers constructed a 3D model.
The results reported in the journal Science Advances could be used to develop more accurate predictions of how the Greenland Ice Sheet will respond to climate change. "Even tiny amounts of liquid water alters the mechanical characteristics of the ice considerably" said first author Dr Robert Law, who completed the work as a PhD student in Cambridge. "The findings challenge the textbook view of how ice sheets move" added supervisor and project leader Professor Poul Christoffersen.
# Runaway West Antarctic ice retreat can be slowed by climate-driven changes in ocean temperature
17th January, 2023
An international team of researchers, led by Dr. Frazer Christie, has combined satellite imagery and climate and ocean records to obtain the most detailed understanding yet of how West Antarctica is responding to climate change.
Their results, published in the journal Nature Communications, show that while West Antarctica continues to retreat, the pace of ice melting has recently slowed across its most vulnerable sector in-sync with changes in atmosphere and ocean conditions offshore. Ultimately, the research implies that runaway, ice-sheet-wide collapse isn't inevitable, depending on how the climate changes over the next few decades.
The study was supported by the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, the Natural Environment Research Council, the US National Science Foundation, the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration project and the European Space Agency.
# Shackleton's Cabin on BBC iPlayer featuring SPRI Archives
12th January, 2023
Naomi Boneham, SPRI's Archivist appears in the film in interview with Sven Habermann sharing Shackleton's diaries.
On 5 January 1922, world-famous Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton died of a heart attack in his cabin aboard The Quest during his final expedition to the South Pole Moored in Norway, The Quest was broken apart. However, one of the dockers had the foresight to remove Shackleton's cabin. He took it home and it served as his family's garden shed for three generations.
Nearly 100 years after Shackleton's death, the cabin has been donated to a museum in the explorer's hometown, where master craftsman and Shackleton enthusiast Sven Habermann painstakingly restores it to its former glory. With only one surviving photograph of the cabin's interior, Sven goes to extreme lengths to retrace every detail, from the wood to the original wallpaper used. Shackleton's Cabin follows Sven as he rebuilds the cabin and explores the life and final days of his hero.
# A new graphic novel brings story of Scott’s expedition to the South Pole to life
28th October, 2022
To celebrate the centennial year of the publication of The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard, an account of Scott's infamous expedition to the South Pole, SPRI Institute Associate and former Disney animator Sarah Airriess has transformed Cherry's tome into a soon-to-be published graphic novel. Retelling the story through cinematic visuals, the novel keeps as true as possible to the original account while bringing out the emotional core of Cherry's tale, and open up a classic book to new audiences.
Apsley Cherry-Garrard was one of the youngest members of the expedition. As things started to go wrong, he found himself drawn to the centre of events and burdened with responsibility far beyond his abilities. A painful loss of innocence is the axis on which the story turns, but The Worst Journey in the World is ultimately about the power of friendship, the value of curiosity, and the extremes to which people go for the sake of an idea.
Airriess will be releasing the story as a set of volumes, the first part following the expedition crew of the Terra Nova as they sail from Cardiff to Antarctica. The Worst Journey in the World: The Graphic Novel, will be published by independent publisher, Indie Novella, and will be available to buy online and via selected distributors from 24th November 2022.
Airriess undertook research over the course of a decade to bring her graphic novel to life, in collaboration with the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge, using their archives to inform the narrative, and the collection of the Polar Museum to inform the drawings. In 2019, she travelled to Antarctica in order to follow the footsteps of Scott and faithfully portray the setting of the story from first-hand experience.
Airriess' work behind the making of the graphic novel is currently on exhibition at The Polar Museum in Cambridge and can be viewed by the public until the end of October 2022.
# Professor Julian Dowdeswell reappointed as a Royal Museums Greenwich Trustee
27th October, 2022
Professor Julian Dowdeswell has been reappointed as a Royal Museums Greenwich Trustee Trustee, for a four-year term commencing 3 September 2022 until 2 September 2026.
Julian has been Professor of Physical Geography in Cambridge University since 2002. He has just retired from almost 20 years as Director of the Scott Polar Research Institute. He is a glaciologist, studying the form and flow of glaciers and ice caps and their response to climate change, and the links between former ice sheets and the marine geological record. Julian has worked, on the ice and from aircraft, in Antarctica and many parts of the Arctic. He has also undertaken many periods of work on icebreaking research vessels in the Southern Ocean and the Arctic.
# Seasonal change in Antarctic Ice Sheet movement observed for first time
6th October, 2022
SPRI researchers, led by Karla Boxall, have identified distinct, seasonal movements in the flow of land ice draining into George VI Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula. This is the first time that such seasonal cycles have been detected on land ice flowing into ice shelves in Antarctica.
Using imagery from the Copernicus/European Space Agency Sentinel-1 satellites, the researchers found that the glaciers feeding the ice shelf speed up by approximately 15% during the Antarctic summer. The results are reported in the journal The Cryosphere.
The research has been published as an article in the journal The Cryosphere and was supported in part by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation and the European Space Agency through the Antarctic Ice Sheet Climate Change Initiative Programme.
# Ice age valleys give clues to future ice sheet change
6th October, 2022
Deep valleys buried under the seafloor of the North Sea record how the ancient ice sheets that used to cover the UK and Europe expelled water to stop themselves from collapsing.
A new study by James Kirkham (Lead Author) and others published this week discovered that the valleys took just hundreds of years to form as they transported vast amounts of meltwater away from under the ice and out into the sea.
This new understanding of when the vast ice sheets melted 20,000 years ago has implications for how glaciers may respond to climate warming today.
# New evidence for possible liquid water beneath the south polar ice cap of Mars
29th September, 2022
An international team of researchers, led by Neil Arnold at SPRI, has revealed new evidence for the possible existence of liquid water beneath the south polar ice cap of Mars.
The team, including researchers from the University of Sheffield, the University of Nantes, University College, Dublin, and the Open University used spacecraft laser-altimeter measurements of the shape of the upper surface of the ice cap to identify subtle patterns in its height.
Their results agree with earlier ice-penetrating radar measurements that were originally interpreted to show a potential area of liquid water beneath the ice. There has been debate over the liquid water interpretation from the radar data alone, with some studies suggesting the radar signal is not due to liquid water.
The results, reported in the journal Nature Astronomy, provide the first independent line of evidence, using data other than radar, that there is liquid water beneath Mars' south polar ice cap.