ANDRILL paper fast-breaking paper (Thomson)

ScienceWatch.com tracks Fast Breaking Papers which have high percentage increase in citations in Essential Science Indicators of Thomson Reuters. From the fifth bimonthly period of 2009 to the sixth bimonthly period of 2009, for the GEOSCIENCE category, the paper on the record of the Antarctic Geological Drilling Program from the McMurdo Iceshelf (AND-1B) published in NATURE is the number 1. See http://sciencewatch.com/dr/fbp/2010/10aprfbp/

Topography of the Gamburtsev mountains

In the June 4 issue of Nature, Sun Bo et al., present the results of a series of radar surveys of the Gamburtsev mountains, which is generally regarded as the site of Antarctic ice-sheet inception ca. 34 Million years ago. Read the first paragraph here.

West Antarctic Ice sheet collapse and sea level rise

In a recent issue of Science (15 May) Bamber et al. investigate the eustatic contribution of a rapid collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet with an ice sheet model and an updated version of the subglacial topography. Read the abstract here.

New European consortium for Antarctic Drilling

EuroANDRILL is a new initiative to increase participation of European countries in the ANtarctic Geological DRILLing Program. For more information visit the EuroANDRILL web address at http://www.euroandrill.com/.

Two articles in Nature on instability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet

Two articles in the March 19 issue of Nature address the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. One study by Naish et al., reports on Pliocene collapse and obliquity forcing from an ANDRILL sediment core. The other paper is a modeling study by Pollard and DeConto in which they utilize an ice-sheet model with a novel iceshelf module to reconstruct Antarctic Ice Sheet dynamics for the past 5 million years. The First paragraphs of both articles can be read here:
Naish et al.
Pollard and DeConto

Special Issue on ACE research published

A Special Issue on "Antarctic cryosphere and Southern Ocean climate evolution (Cenozoic–Holocene)" has been published in Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology Volume 260. Editors are Fabio Florindo, Anna Nelson and Alan Haywood. The issue includes 16 papers on the palaeoenvironments and palaeoclimates around Antarctica, largely from seismic research, drilling and coring.

ANDRILL SMS has started

The Antarctic geological Drilling program (ANDRILL) is currently drilling in southern McMurdo Sound (SMS) in pursuit of an ice-proximal record of the middle Miocene transition and climate optimum. The drillrig is situated on a sea ice platform. Read weekly science updates at the ANDRILL website here..