#AARC2026 brought to you by @antarctic.bsky.social, @antarcticsciaus.bsky.social, Australian Antarctic Division and @arcsaef.bsky.social

📣 CALL FOR ABSTRACTS at the 2026 Australian Antarctic Research Conference!

📍Hobart @utas.edu.au 25-28 August 2026
(ECR day 24 August)

▶️ leishman-aarc-2026.eventsair.site/call-for-abs...

📆 Abstract submissions open to 8 June, registrations open now

The beloved emperor penguin and Antarctic fur seal are now officially endangered. Here’s what can be done The loss of iconic Antarctic wildlife is no longer a future possibility. It is happening in real-time, while we watch.

📉 "Defining these animals as endangered is a stark reminder of how quickly Antarctica is changing before our eyes. Without a rapid reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and sustained conservation action, these species may be lost forever."

▶️ theconversation.com/the-beloved-...

15 years of change This month, Nature Climate Change turns 15 years old. In this infographic we show some of the ways the world has changed since we started.

15 years of change (since @natclimate.nature.com launched)

▶️ www.nature.com/immersive/s4...

🚨 WORK WITH US in Hobart!
@imas-utas.bsky.social @utas.edu.au

🔄 Technician – Carbon Analyst

🌊 Support at-sea biogeochemical sensor calibration, sample analysis, data synthesis and quality control (full-time position for 2.5 years)

✍️ Apply by 3 May 2026

▶️ careers.utas.edu.au/en/job/50279...

Antarctic science meets policy - AAPP Communicating the importance of rapid changes in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean for Australian policy and the world

Read more about the inaugural Antarctic Science-Policy Dialogue @imas-utas.bsky.social @utas.edu.au

▶️ aappartnership.org.au/antarctic-sc...

Where Antarctic science meets policy - YouTube The Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science (ACEAS) and the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership (AAPP) organised the inaugural Antarctic S...

🌊 AAPP and our sister research program @antarcticsciaus.bsky.social have presented the most recent #science from #Antarctica and the Southern Ocean to around 80 policy makers from all tiers of Australian government and the non-government sector.

Watch the presentations youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Millennial-scale Atlantic overturning circulation led by the Southern Ocean - Nature Geoscience Changes in Southern Ocean circulation have preceded shifts in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation in the North Atlantic over the past 1,300 years, according to an analysis of bamboo coral ...

🌊 What if the heartbeat of the Atlantic Ocean doesn’t start in the north… but in the far south?

Signals from the Southern Ocean, found in deep sea corals, appear to set the pace of AMOC variability over 1000’s of yrs

The “conveyor belt” might have a southern engine

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

In the latest 'Southern Signals', our Antarctic science bulletin:

🔷 taking Antarctica to the Tasmanian Parliament

🔷 the 2026 Australian Antarctic Research Conference

🔷 AAPP science in the spotlight

Read it here ▶️ createsend.com/t/j-5ED3A8D8...

And subscribe ▶️ aappartnership.org.au/contact-us/

3D ICE: Explore Antarctica & Greenland Like Never Before YouTube video by Yu (Eddie) Wang

www.youtube.com/watch?v=J81v...

3D ICE: Interactive Cryosphere Explorer 3D ICE is an Interactive Cryosphere Explorer for Antarctica and Greenland, designed to transform complex, state-of-the-art cryosphere datasets into an intuitive 3D experience, seamlessly bridging the ...

3d-ice.com

Zoom, rotate, peel: Visualising ice sheets at your fingertips - AAPP A new interactive three-dimensional mapping tool for ice and oceans in Greenland and Antarctica

🌊 "Antarctica is not just some distant, irrelevant, frozen continent; it is a critical element that is deeply intertwined with all of us and will profoundly shape the future destiny of human society"—Yu Wang, PhD student @utas.edu.au @imas-utas.bsky.social

▶️ aappartnership.org.au/zoom-rotate-...

🌊 Our March issue of 'Southern Signals' is out next week.

Please sign up at aappartnership.org.au/contact-us/ to receive your own quarterly #Antarctic #science bulletin by email.

🚨 Four new PhD projects in Hobart at @utas.edu.au!

Work on precision #climate tracking in the Southern Ocean:
1️⃣ ocean heat uptake
2️⃣ human-induced salinity shifts
3️⃣ energy and sea level budgets
4️⃣ changes in the overturning circulation

⚠️ Applications close 1 April

▶️ www.utas.edu.au/research/deg...

👋 Welcome back to Hobart to expeditioners and crew returning home from #Antarctica on Australia's icebreaker RSV Nuyina.

State of the Global Climate 2025 The global climate system is complex. In order to unpack such complexity, the WMO State of the Global Climate uses Climate Indicators to describe the changing climate. The following site aims to provi...

🌏 For the first time, the State of the Global Climate Report 2025 by @wmo-global.bsky.social includes Earth’s energy imbalance as one of the key #climate indicators.

▶️ storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/4d50...

Photos copyright Parafilms / EPFL

Cyclone Steve - Wikipedia

Don't forget Cyclone Steve back in 2000
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone...

ACE research ship Akademik Treshnikov

8️⃣ Mapping the current state of the unique microbial diversity in this rapidly changing ocean provides a baseline for predicting Earth’s future — “our work takes a step towards a comprehensive understanding of the Southern Ocean’s plankton ecology and evolution.”

📸 Brieuc Delbot

The Microbial Loop YouTube video by Ocean Portal

7️⃣ As #climate change reshapes ocean circulation, it will also reshape microbial gene distributions—altering carbon storage, nutrient cycles, and even cloud formation.

Smithsonian animation ▶️ www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtxU...

Life-cycle of an Antarctic cloud - AAPP How the biology of the Southern Ocean is linked to the clouds in the atmosphere

6️⃣ This is important because the Southern Ocean’s microbial soup (alongside plankton) has a planetary impact, helping to regulate Earth’s climate systems by recycling carbon and emitting gases that seed clouds.

▶️ aappartnership.org.au/life-cycle-o...

5️⃣ And even more interesting: on a Southern Ocean-scale, around 20% of gene patterns can be predicted from environmental conditions alone, opening the door to forecasting microbial functions from ocean physics.

📸 marine bacterium Pelagibacter, possibly the most abundant bacteria on the planet

4️⃣ It turns out that water masses have specific microbiomes. Microbial gene composition in the Southern Ocean is structured by temperature, salinity and oxygen – the ‘flavours’ of different water masses – not just geography.

3️⃣ One of the study’s co-authors, Marion Fourquez (right), collected samples on the ACE voyage nearly ten years ago: "it may seem slow, but that’s what it takes for novel science in remote places. It took time to extract the DNA, get the sequences and only then begin the brainstorming.”
📸 Noé Sardet

Water mass specific genes dominate the Southern Ocean microbiome Nature Communications - Southern Ocean microbial communities are less well studied. Here, the authors generate a circumpolar-scale gene catalog from 218 metagenomics samples revealing broadscale...

2️⃣ This huge reservoir of unknown biodiversity is revealed by a new study in @natcomms.nature.com led by Emile Faure. It shows that microbial genetic diversity in the Southern Ocean shares a common ‘polar signature’ with the Arctic Ocean while having its own unique characteristics.

▶️ rdcu.be/e85YJ

1️⃣🌊🦠🧬 GENETIC SEASCAPE: Travelling more than 33,500km around #Antarctica, the 2016-17 Antarctic Circumpolar Expedition has yielded a massive new catalogue of microbial genes from 218 ocean samples — 38% of which have no known match in existing databases.

A Hidden Antarctic Tipping Point May Have Just Been Triggered YouTube video by PBS Terra

NEW ABNORMAL: #Antarctic sea ice on @pbs.org with @edoddridge.bsky.social @ariaan.bsky.social @climatenerilie.bsky.social & A Silvano — "the response to an extreme loss of sea ice is not just the normal response made a bit bigger, but it is structurally different."

▶️ www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dka4...

Microbes in Antarctica survive the freezing and dark winter by living on air New study provides evidence that Antarctic microbes make energy from the air at temperatures as low as -20°C.

🦠 LIFE AT EXTREMES: "Antarctic microbes make energy from the air at temperatures as low as –20°C. This finding improves our understanding of...how climate change will affect this important process."— Ry Holland @arcsaef.bsky.social in @aunz.theconversation.com

▶️ theconversation.com/microbes-in-...

OPENING THE FLOODGATES A science briefing about Antarcticaand sea-level rise

"This demonstrates that how we train our models dramatically affects our predictions. Getting these forecasts right is crucial because Thwaites alone could raise global sea levels by over two feet (60cm) if it completely collapsed." (Goldberg et al.)

▶️ aapp.shorthandstories.com/opening-the-...

"These models predict that by 2067, Thwaites could be losing 180–200 billion tons of ice per year—roughly equal to all the ice Antarctica loses today. The models show ice thinning spreading far inland along a deep valley beneath the glacier, potentially triggering runaway losses."