A lack of human activity in the Southern Ocean is just one reason why the air is so clean. Clouds and rain play a vital role in scrubbing the atmosphere, removing natural airborne particles too.
Back when there were Arctic alligators and turtles, ‘polar stratospheric clouds’ kept their world warm. Research suggests these clouds contribute to the ‘missing warming’ in climate models.
Antarctic sea ice is now nearly 9% below normal. But the dramatic decline is not universal around the continent, which makes it difficult to predict the overall impact of climate change.
Glaciologists are discovering new ways surface meltwater alters the internal structure of ice sheets, and raising an alarm that sea level rise could be much more abrupt than current models forecast.
Marine life known as zooplankton might be the biggest problem with getting carbon cycling right in climate models. The potential variations in carbon uptake are greater than global transport emissions.
Sea-level rise isn’t the only climate-related problem for our coasts – extreme waves that cause flooding and erosion are also changing, but exactly how is hard to predict.
Chief Investigator, ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes; Chief Investigator, ARC Securing Antarctica's Environmental Future; Professor, Monash University