Antarctica

A 1270 km² glacier has broken off the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica, the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) reported. The chunk, which is larger than New York City, broke off on Friday. Glaciologists have been expecting the event for over a decade and had gotten first indications that the iceberg would break off last November.

"The first indication that a calving event was imminent came in November 2020 when a new chasm – called North Rift – headed towards another large chasm near the Stancomb-Wills Glacier Tongue 35 km away. North Rift is the third major crack through the ice shelf to become active in the last decade," the statement of the BSA read. "Our teams at BAS have been prepared for the calving of an iceberg from Brunt Ice Shelf for years. We monitor the ice shelf daily using an automated network of high-precision GPS instruments that surround the station, these measure how the ice shelf is deforming and moving."

Antarctica has recorded its first cases of Covid-19 after 36 people got infected with the virus at a Chilean General Bernardo O’Higgins Riquelme research base. Antarctica had previously been the only continent free of Covid-19.

Among those infected are 26 members of the Chilean army and 10 maintenance workers. They have been evacuated to Punta Arena, Chile and are currently in quarantine and in reportedly good conditions.

"Thanks to the timely preventive action … it was possible to relieve said personnel, who, after being subjected to a medical control and the administration of a PCR test ... turned out to be positive for Covid-19," the Chilean army said in a statement.

The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) - the national Antarctic operation of the United Kingdom - has discovered new breeding sides of Emperor penguins. Through satellite images from the Europan Union's Sentinel-2 the BAS was able to identify the poo of the Penguins giving information about the location.

This discovery lifts the known global population of Emperor penguins by 5-10% as possibly as many as 278,500 pairs are breeding there. The new images have increased the number of known breeding sites from 50 to 61.

NASA's ICESat-2's satellite observation data shows the change of Greenland's and Antarctica's ice sheets between 2003 and 2019. The data reveals that the ice in both eastern Antarctica and central Greenland thickened slightly but showed a drastic thinning along the coastline and a severe thinning on Greenland's glaciers.

A team of researchers from the United Kingdom and Germany has discovered fossil traces of a rain forest 90 million years old near the South Pole. The analysis of the findings such as preserved roots, pollen and spores have shown that the world was warmer during that time than previously expected. Professor Ulrich Salzman, a co-author and palaeoecologist at Northumbria University said that “The numerous plant remains indicate that the coast of West Antarctica was, back then, a dense temperate, swampy forest, similar to the forests found in New Zealand today".