Shackleton Centenary Expedition
Scientists in New Zealand and Australia have combined to publish work on whether some species of giant daisies known as Pleurophyllum arrived from Antarctica. The flowers, known to researchers as megaherbs, grow abundantly on the tiny windswept islands such as the Snares, Auckland and Campbell island groups. The research has been published on the online Nature Precedings pre-print service.
"There's always been a great deal of discussion about how plants spread in the southern hemisphere and the extent to which Antarctica has been important in this," says co-author Chris Quinn from the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney.
As the ice age began some 1.8 million years ago, conditions on Antarctica itself became inhospitable to many plants.
But the small islands further north offered a haven for survival just beyond the icy reach of the glaciers, the authors say.
Click here for the story from the Discovery Channel website.
Click here to read the research paper itself at Nature Precedings.
This year on April Fools Day the BBC went one further than the spaghetti trees of yesteryear - they created flying Adelie penguins.
Click here to watch them in action and to find out how it was done.
Norwegian sailor Oyvind Tangen has managed to take some beautiful pictures of striped icebergs whilst on board a research ship 660 miles north of Antarctica.
According to the article: "When an iceberg falls into the sea, a layer of salty seawater can freeze to the underside. If this is rich in algae, it can form a green stripe.
Brown, black and yellow lines are caused by sediment, picked up when the ice sheet grinds downhill towards the sea."
Click here for the story and more pictures from the Daily Mail.
With so many stories in the news these days about China's peaceful rise this century, it was interesting to come across this article the other day. China is building a background atmosphere observation station at its Zhongshan base in Antarctica.
According to the People's Daily Online
"Researchers at Zhongshan station will be able to observe surface ozone and gases like carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, as well as black carbon aerosol."
Zhongshan was built in 1989 and makes year round observations focussing on meteorology, the ionosphere, upper atmosphere physics, geomagnetism and seismology. During the Antarctic summer seasons, in-situ scientific investigations are also made on geology, biology, meteorology, glaciology, polar physics, environmental science, human medicine and marine science.
Click here for the story from the People's Daily Online.
You can find out more about Zhongshan base and what it does by clicking here Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration (CAA).
It ocurred to us the other day that we haven't posted a story about penguins yet. So here is one from a WWF report which came out recently that shows that melting sea ice and over-fishing have triggered a 50% decline in the population of Emperor penguins in the last 50 years.
Emily Lewis Brown of the WWF notes: "As the ice melts, these icons of the Antarctic will have to face an extremely tough battle to survive. One of the coldest environments in the world is actually seeing some of the fastest rates of global warming, and unless action is taken to reduce global CO2 emissions, the future of many Antarctic species looks bleak."
Here is a link to the story as covered on the msn website
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