The Latest Breaking News from Southern Ocean

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

Scientists have set off on an almost 10,000km voyage to uncover information about the Southern Ocean that could shed light on the future of climate change.

Scientists hope mapping long-dormant volcanoes in the Southern Ocean can lead to a better understanding of a crucial current surrounding Antarctica.

Scientists on the CSIRO research vessel Investigator have recovered a deep water robot that has spent three years gathering data in the Southern Ocean.

The rate at which the warming Southern Ocean melts the West Antarctic ice sheet will speed up rapidly over the course of this century, regardless of how much emissions fall in coming decades, our new research suggests. This ocean-driven melting is expected to increase sea-level rise, with consequences for coastal…

Climate change has impacted the ecosystem and species of the Southern Ocean and Antarctica, a five-year study by 200 scientists shows.

While the Southern Ocean around Antarctica has been warming for decades, the annual extent of winter sea ice seemed relatively stable – compared to the Arctic. In some areas Antarctic sea ice was even increasing.

Our inability to confidently predict sea level rise between an extremely challenging two metres and a civilisation-ending 10 metres is an exemplar of the problem facing researchers