British Antarctic Survey

British Antarctic Survey We do polar. Uncovering the secrets of the polar regions, doing science for a sustainable planet. Thanks for your support 👍

We're the UK's polar research institute 👋 Uncovering the secrets of Earth's frozen places, doing science for a sustainable planet.

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A beary special visitor was near (but not too near) RRS Sir David Attenborough last night 🐻‍❄️This very obliging polar b...
09/08/2026

A beary special visitor was near (but not too near) RRS Sir David Attenborough last night 🐻‍❄️

This very obliging polar bear served its best angles for the assembled photograp— *AHEM* er, we mean the GIANT science expedition team, and who are studying ocean and glacier interactions in Greenland.

The ship was surveying in the ice and mélange in the Fjords south of Kangerlussuaq Glacier.

The aim of the GIANT project is to make a big leap forward in how freshwater melt from Greenland’s ice sheet is represented in climate predictions. This big influx of water has the potential to disrupt the major ocean currents that cycle heat and nutrients around the Atlantic.

Important work? Yes. But for about 30 minutes this polar bear was slightly more important.

📸 The photographers:
Simon Wright Simon Wright (1, 9)
Em Newton (2, 5, 10)
Joe Jackson J O E J A C K S O N (3)
Ali (4, 7)
Rob Templeton (6, 8)

06/08/2026

Our Director Professor Dame Jane Francis will be co-hosting this event tonight at the Royal Geographical Society to mark the 125th anniversary of Captain Scott’s British National Antarctic Expedition, which saw the discovery of the South Magnetic Pole and reached a new 'furthest south'. Tickets are still available! 👇

05/08/2026

We want more moorings! 👏 And that’s what the GIANT science investigation is delivering, with this unique pair of ocean monitoring stations in one Greenland fjord.

As Dr Lewis Drysdale from explains, these moorings will tell us about the action near the glacier ice face, as well as how the fresher water is interacting with the ocean at the fjord mouth. We even think that the mooring by the glacier may be the closest one has ever been placed...

Moorings are an MVP of ocean science for a reason, gathering samples and data reliably from:
⬇️ a range of depths
📍 in one location
📅 over days/months/years

These moorings will be a consistent complement to the range of surveys the team are doing with our ship and a fleet of robots across 3-miippugut fjord.

This all adds up to one big, important portrait of a Greenland fjord: the glacier, the water, and the influence they might have on ocean currents and climate.

02/08/2026

Nature roars! Scientists and crew on board RRS Sir David Attenborough captured footage of a huge glacier calving event in East Greenland.

The team were working near Sorgenfri Gletsjer, at the top of 3-miippugut Fjord, north of Kangerlussuaq Fjord. As evening set in, a big section of the glacier-front calved off all at once. The section that broke away covered 1km width across the ice face and was an average of 100m thick - totalling an estimated 18 million metric tonnes.

While Greenland’s ice sheet is losing mass at record rates, calving events are a normal part of the fluctuation and balance of ocean-terminating glaciers, particularly in summer.

At the time, the research ship was more than a kilometre away from the calving and emerging icebergs. As the event began, the crew responded by turning the ship into the safest position to handle waves. RRS Sir David Attenborough is a capable icebreaker-class vessel - usually seen near Antarctica, traversing sea ice and navigating around the vast tabular icebergs that are more typical to the frozen South.

The ship is in Greenland as part of the GIANT science expedition. The aim is to understand and model how Greenland’s glaciers interact with the warming ocean - including melting and calving - a set of processes that are not currently well represented in climate simulations.

This spectacular event is a reminder of why we are using a fleet of specialist autonomous vehicles to capture data near the ice face!

🎥 Loïs Blay & Alice Fremand

We’ve been papped… By a satellite! 🛰️The RRS Sir David Attenborough is visible in some of the latest Sentinel-2 images o...
31/07/2026

We’ve been papped… By a satellite! 🛰️

The RRS Sir David Attenborough is visible in some of the latest Sentinel-2 images of Greenland, as was spotted by some of the eagle-eyed team onboard.

In the images, you can even make out the colours of the ship! We particularly love that you can (if you squint) make out the faint path the SDA leaves in its wake as it pushes through the sea ice ❄️

🛰️ Sentinel-2 is run by Copernicus EU
🌍The images are used for remote-sensing science
📐 Each pixel represents a 10 metre square
🚢The SDA could be represented by a total of 7 pixels!

The SDA is currently sailing around the eastern coast of Greenland as part of the GIANT (Greenland Ice sheet to AtlaNtic Tipping points from ice loss) mission, which explores how the warming ocean is affecting Greenland’s huge ice sheet, and what this means for our future climate.

Led by the British Antarctic Survey, GIANT focuses on the giant glaciers that flow into Greenland’s fjords. When these glaciers melt, fracture and collapse into the ocean, they release vast amounts of freshwater into the North Atlantic💧

The team on board is using marine robots, drones, and satellites to map the ice. Scientists will use this data to build improved computer models, and these models will help predict the future of Greenland’s glaciers, as well as advancing the global models used to forecast climate change.

Keep an eye on our socials next week if you want to learn more about the robots the team are using aboard the SDA! 🚢

28/07/2026

It might be Sewing Bee season, but we’re talking about a very different kind of darn…

Right now, 40 radars scattered across the polar regions are quietly watching the upper atmosphere, tracking invisible rivers of charged particles flowing 250 km above Earth’s surface. This is SuperDARN, and the data it collects helps keep our satellites safe.

SuperDARN monitors the ionosphere - a dynamic, electrified layer of the upper atmosphere, about 60 – 1,000km above Earth’s surface – where many satellites, including the International Space Station, orbit.

The Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN) is an array of radars that measure the movement of charged particles in the polar ionosphere. Think of it as tracking the ‘winds’ of the upper atmosphere. By combining data from radars across the globe, scientists can produce real-time weather maps of the ionosphere that reveal how energy travels from the Sun, through Earth’s magnetic environment, down into our atmosphere.

This matters for all of us. When solar activity heats the upper atmosphere, satellites experience increased drag, pushing them off course in ways that can be dangerous and costly. SuperDARN data helps predict when and where this happens, protecting the satellites we depend on every day. It also helps identify when GPS signals are likely to be disrupted, improving safety for aviation and shipping, for example.

The British Antarctic Survey has been part of SuperDARN since the very beginning. Our radar in the Falkland Islands is part of the network, and we host one of only three global data mirrors, making measurements freely available to researchers worldwide.

Last month, our team joined around 70 scientists from across the globe at the annual SuperDARN workshop to share new research, coordinate the network and plan the next year of international collaboration. We presented new software and data products, led coordination meetings and heard about exciting new work combining SuperDARN with satellite missions to push the science even further.

Space weather is a global challenge and tackling it takes global science collaboration.

What if the ocean current keeping Britain warm started to slow down? ☔ The AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circula...
21/07/2026

What if the ocean current keeping Britain warm started to slow down? ☔ The AMOC (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation) has been regulating our climate for thousands of years. It acts like a giant conveyor belt, moving heat from the tropics to our shores – it's why our winters are mild while Canada's east coast freezes at the same latitude.

Models predict that the AMOC could slow down or collapse, driven by melting glacial ice in the Arctic. Disruption could mean profound cooling for Northern Europe, as the rest of the world continues to warm. It could mean extreme weather on a scale we've never experienced.

Check out the full story in our latest Long Read – it has pressure gauges that ‘talk’ across oceans, models that run backwards in time, and a research project with an army of robots 🤖

🔗 Link in the comments ⬇️

19/07/2026

Bon voyage! 🚢 The UK’s polar research ship RRS Sir David Attenborough has just left Harwich for a rare science mission to the Arctic.

This project is called GIANT - and we’re racing to investigate how melting glaciers in Greenland could lead to important climate tipping points in the Atlantic.

That matters because the massive amounts of meltwater from Greenland could disrupt a major system of ocean currents, called the North Atlantic Subpolar Gyre. In turn, that could affect how much warm water and weather gets pushed towards the UK and Europe. And that would mean things would get a lot chillier…

Seems like something we should know more about. We’re on it. No pressure!

ship science

Today, the RRS Sir David Attenborough set sail for Greenland as part of the GIANT project – our ambitious mission to und...
16/07/2026

Today, the RRS Sir David Attenborough set sail for Greenland as part of the GIANT project – our ambitious mission to understand how melting fjord glaciers are affecting Atlantic currents, climate, and wider marine ecosystems 🚢

As the Arctic warms, meltwater from Greenland’s glaciers flows into the ocean. Scientists are concerned this could disrupt the North Atlantic Subpolar Gyre – a whirlpool of currents that helps keep the ocean conveyor belt ticking along nicely. If this slows, there could be serious consequences for European weather – potentially within decades.

To investigate, we're calling in the robo-squad to take measurements around the ice 🤖

DriX skims the surface, mapping the glacier in near real-time. Gavia and EcoSubs dive in formation, talking with acoustics. Meltstake drills into the ice. And yes, Boaty McBoatface is along for the ride too – diving 1,500m beneath the waves to map the geometry of iceberg-choked fjords.

All that data feeds into AI-boosted climate models to sharpen our predictions of what Greenland's ice loss really means for the planet – and lay the groundwork for an Early Warning System for rapid glacier change. Pretty important stuff. No pressure, Boaty.

Bon voyage to the scientists and crew! 👋

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