Antarctica

• Thursday, October 27th 2011 - 20:13 UTC

  Centennial of Amundsen and Scott’s South Pole feat next 14 December

  

  British and Norwegian teams are in Punta Arenas, extreme south of Chile, preparing for a repeat of the South Pole feat on 14 December 1911 first accomplished by explorer Roald Amundsen and a month later by Sir Robert Scott.

• Monday, October 24th 2011 - 23:17 UTC

  South Georgia expects 51 cruise calls and 5.000 visitors for the 2011/12 season

  

  Fifty one cruise visits have been booked for the current 2011/12 season in South Georgia, extreme South Atlantic, with a potential number of 6.350 visitors (were they all to be full), but with the actual figure likely to be nearer to 5.000. Two cruises “L'Austral” and “Island Sky” will be making their first ever visit to South Georgia.

• Saturday, October 22nd 2011 - 10:49 UTC

  Ozone hole over Antarctica reached its ninth largest on record in September

  

  The Antarctic ozone hole, which yawns wide every Southern Hemisphere spring, reached its annual peak on September 12, stretching 10.05 million square miles, the ninth largest on record and equivalent to three times the area of Brazil: 3.3m.

• Saturday, October 22nd 2011 - 00:43 UTC

  Mercosur and EU will be ready to exchange trade proposals ‘in June 2012’

  

  Mercosur and the European Union are committed to presenting their proposals with list of products for a free trade agreement in June 2012, announced on Friday Uruguay’s Foreign Affaire minister Luis Almagro.

• Wednesday, October 12th 2011 - 05:45 UTC

  Argentine-Swedish team discovers 49 million-years fossil of fully aquatic whale in Antarctica

  

  The jawbone of an ancient whale found in Antarctica may be the oldest fully aquatic whale yet discovered, Argentine scientists said Tuesday. The discovery took place close to the Argentine Antarctic base of Marambio next to the Weddell Sea.

• Wednesday, October 12th 2011 - 05:42 UTC

  UK expedition plans to collect water and sediment from Antarctic sub-glacial lake

  

  British engineers will next week set off for Antarctica to prepare the ground for an ambitious exploration project to search for life in an isolated lake three kilometers beneath solid ice, called Lake Ellsworth.

• Monday, October 3rd 2011 - 07:14 UTC

  “Ozone hole” over the Arctic claims NASA; blames long spell of cold weather

  

  Ozone loss over the Arctic this year was so severe that for the first time it could be called an “ozone hole” like the Antarctic one, scientists report. About 20km above the ground, 80% of the ozone was lost, they say.

• Friday, September 23rd 2011 - 19:53 UTC

  HMS Protector ready for Antarctica; no helicopter on maiden deployment

  

  Icebreaker HMS Protector, formerly MV Polarbjørn, has spent the spring and summer steadily being converted into a hydrographic survey ship to plug the gap left by HMS Endurance which nearly sank during a flooding incident in late 2008.

• Wednesday, September 7th 2011 - 11:01 UTC

  King crabs found on the edge of Antarctica as a result of warming waters

  

  King crabs have been found on the edge of Antarctica, probably as a result of warming in the region, scientists say. Writing in the journal Proceedings B, scientists report a large, reproductive population of crabs in the Palmer Deep, a basin cut in the continental shelf.

• Tuesday, September 6th 2011 - 11:09 UTC

  ‘Happy Feet’, the penguin beached in NZ released to return to Antarctica

  

  ‘Happy Feet’, the lost Emperor penguin who became a worldwide celebrity after he washed up on a New Zealand beach was released back into the Southern Ocean on Sunday to begin a long swim home to Antarctica.