Looking across the ice surfaces of the Arctic Ocean or an ice sheet, it is hard to see that these icy worlds are under massive pressure. However, despite the seemingly endless ice areas, the amounts of ice that have melted away due to global warming are unimaginably...
The Arctic sea ice is not only home to polar bears and seals. A variety of different organisms live under and on the ice, including ice algae. These use the brine channels in the ice to survive. Many even require the ice in their reproductive cycle. Picture: Michael...
The MOSAiC expedition, which had reached the North Pole in mid-August, found a patchwork of ice-floes and open water surfaces instead of a closed ice cover. The “Polarstern” was able to pass through the northernmost point of the planet almost unhindered....
The satellite image shows the Pine Island glacier in 2011, when a 30-kilometer-long crack formed and led to the calving of a 720-square-kilometer iceberg. The glacier itself is about 250 kilometers long and its catchment area is about 10 percent of the West Antarctic...
Emperor penguins breed at the beginning of the Antarctic winter on the fast ice around Antarctica. The colonies are usually a few hundred to thousands of breeding pairs large and disband around the end of December. Photo: Michael Wenger Emperor penguins are the icons...
