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New South Pole Seismic Station One of World's Quietest, Most Sensitive

Data collected by a new seismic observatory at the National Science Foundation’s Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station indicate that it is the quietest listening post on the planet for observing shudders produced by earthquakes around the world as they vibrate through the Earth. The South Pole Remote Earth Science Observatory is located eight kilometers from the South Pole and the new seismometers have been installed roughly 300 meters beneath the surface of the continental East Antarctic ice sheet in specially drilled boreholes.

Hitchhiking rocks provide details of glacial melting in West Antarctic

Rocks deposited by glaciers on mountain ranges in West Antarctica have given scientists the most direct evidence yet that parts of the ice sheet are on a long-term, natural trajectory of melting. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet has been melting and contributing water continuously to the ocean for the last 10,000 years and is likely to keep doing so, says John Stone, University of Washington associate professor of Earth and space sciences. Measuring and understanding changes in the Earth?s ice sheets over the past few decades, and predicting their future behavior are major challenges of modern glaciology. But it is important to view these changes in the context of what?s been happening naturally over centuries and millennia. This work establishes a background pattern of steady decline in the West Antarctic ice sheet.