Buried beneath kilometres-thick slabs of ice are rivers and huge lakes - some of which are teeming with microbes that thrive in a world without light or oxygen.
Australia and China both have a keen interest in the frozen continent. And while they don’t agree on everything, there is great scope for scientific collaboration.
A warming Earth could see invading species arrive in Antarctica via the floating “taxi service” of the sea. That could be a threat to the southern continent’s delicate ecosystem.
New mapping shows how Antarctica’s huge Totten Glacier has retreated far inland, raising sea levels by more than a metre. Rising temperatures could trigger it to do so again.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide measurements at Tasmania’s Cape Grim and Antarctica’s Casy Station have now officially passed 400 parts per million and are likely to stay above that for decades to come.
A new millennium-long record reveals that Australia has suffered longer droughts and wet periods than those recorded in the past century’s weather observations.
In an atmosphere of declining government funding for science, researchers can drum up excitement and funding in other ways, just as they did in Edwardian times.
Could sea levels really rise by several metres this century. Probably not, although this century’s greenhouse emissions could potentially set the stage for large rises in centuries to come.
Antarctica’s blue whales all feed in the same place. But a new genetic analysis suggests they are actually three separate populations that breed in different parts of the globe.
The Paris agreement has given us some solid targets to aim for in terms of limiting global warming. But that in turn begs a whole range of new scientific questions.
Distinguished Professor and Deputy Director of ARC Securing Antarctica's Environmental Future (SAEF), University of Wollongong, University of Wollongong