News

21.10.2011

Long time Antarctic film maker Max Quinn has been interviewed by Radio New Zealand National. Max has had four decades of experience behind the camera including a winter over at Scott Base. The interview can be found here.

20.10.2011

100 years ago today Roald Amunsden departed for the South Pole from the Bay of Whales with 5 men, 52 dogs and 4 sledges.  Amundsen recorded the following in his diary “Our sledges were light and the going was lively with provisions for 120 days – the Barrier is smooth and fine with the exception of a few low undulations, there are no hidden dangers”.

20.10.2011

Canterbury artist and mountaineer Austen Deans has died, aged 96. Best known for his traditional landscape paintings depicting his beloved high country, Austen Deans was also a portraitist and, briefly, an official war artist. Austen Deans was a New Zealand Antarctic Programme Invited Artist over the 1981/82 season.

12.10.2011

Each summer the waters in McMurdo Sound, in the south-western Ross Sea experience vast phytoplankton blooms. This phenomenon is stimulated by the addition of bio-available iron in an environment where phytoplankton growth is otherwise iron limited. Aeolian dust – dust carried by the wind – is a major source of iron for sections of the Ross Sea. Dust containing iron accumulates on the sea ice throughout the winter and is released into the ocean during the summer sea ice melt season. Holly Winton, the recipient of this year’s New Zealand Post Scholarship for Antarctic science, has been analysing the dust and iron content of surface snow samples from Southern McMurdo Sound. The full press release can be found here :

10.10.2011

Dr Nancy Bertler at Victoria University of Wellington has just been awarded the prestigious $1million Rutherford Science Award for young, emerging, New Zealand science leaders. This will see 5 years of new funding for her Roosevelt Island Climate Evolution Project based on ice-cores which are to be extracted from West Antarctica this season. More information on this project can be found here.

05.10.2011

The shape of future sea level rise is being modelled by Dr Dan Zwartz of Victoria University of Wellington’s Antarctic Research Centre.  Rather than a uniform rise in sea level, the reality of thermal expansion of the ocean and the melting of land based ice in Antarctica will have a complex and varying result over the Earth’s oceans. The full story can be found here:

04.10.2011

Antarctica New Zealand are finalists in the Sustainable 60 Awards. This is a national competition run by Fairfax Media, Unlimited Magazine and Price Waterhouse Cooper to encourage New Zealand companies to embrace sustainability throughout their business practice. The winners will be announced at the Sustainable 60 Awards evening in Auckland on 30 November, 2011. For more information visit www.sustainable60.co.nz.

30.09.2011

The 2011/12 Antarctic summer season will officially be opened today with the arrival of the US Air Force C-17 Globemaster aircraft to Christchurch and a combined United States/ New Zealand season opening function at the Wigram Air Force Museum. The C 17 Globemaster will be opened to the public on Saturday 1 October at Christchurch International Airport from 10.30am to 12.30pm. On Sunday at 11am there will also be a “South to Antarctica” church service at the Christ’s College Chapel.

29.09.11

Now that the sun has a more regular presence at Scott Base, the Arrival Heights and Ross Island Wind Farm webcams are back up on the webcams page, along with the Scott Base webcam.

28.09.2011

While the debate surrounding climate change has become mainstream news over the past few years, ocean acidification has only recently started to gain media attention.  Ocean acidification has been dubbed ‘the other CO₂ problem’ and research is gathering pace to determine potential consequences of increasing ocean acidity. The full press release can be found here.