The Latest Breaking News from Southern Ocean

If you ever find yourself on Macquarie Island – a narrow, wind-lashed ridge halfway between Tasmania and Antarctica – the first thing you’ll notice is the wildlife. Elephant seals sprawl across dark beaches. King penguins march up mossy slopes. Albatrosses circle over vast, treeless uplands.

In a world affected by climate change, the Southern Ocean plays an outsized role. It absorbs up to 40% of the human-caused emissions taken up by the oceans while also being home to some of the world’s most vulnerable ecosystems.

Between 18,000 and 11,000 years ago, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere suddenly shot up. This caused rapid global warming, the mass melting of glaciers, and the end of the last ice age.

Analysis of global climate patterns from past 1.5 million years reveal links between ocean circulation and climate changes.

Tasmania will remain home to the nation's Antarctic icebreaker, the RSV Nuyina, and gateway to the Southern Ocean following a $188 million deal.

The Southern Ocean encircling Antarctica is the world’s largest feeding ground for baleen whales – species like humpbacks that filter tiny organisms from seawater for food. In the 20th century, whalers killed roughly 2 million large whales in the Southern Ocean. Some populations, like the Antarctic blue whale, were reduced…

Last year Antarctica’s sea ice was 1.6m sq km below average – the size of Britain, France, Germany and Spain combined. This week it had even less than that

The Southern Ocean is wild and dynamic. It experiences Earth’s strongest winds and largest waves. It is home to city-sized icebergs and the biggest ocean current on the globe, as well as tiny turbulent flows that fit inside a teacup.

The Southern Ocean, a region critical to Earth’s climate, hosts vast blooms of microscopic ocean plants known as phytoplankton. They form the very basis of the Antarctic food web.