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Another factor might be contributing to the thinning of some of the Antarctica's glaciers: volcanoes. In an article published Sunday on the Web site of the journal Nature Geoscience, Hugh Corr and David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey report the identification of a layer of volcanic ash and glass shards frozen within an ice sheet in western Antarctica. "This is the first time we have seen a volcano beneath the ice sheet punch a hole through the ice sheet" in Antarctica, Vaughan said. Volcanic heat could still be melting ice to water and contributing to thinning and speeding up...

PARIS (AFP) - A powerful volcano erupted under the icesheet of West Antarctica around 2,000 years ago and it might still be active today, a finding that prompts questions about ice loss from the white continent, British scientists report on Sunday. The explosive event -- rated "severe" to "cataclysmic" on an international scale of volcanic force -- punched a massive breach in the icesheet and spat out a plume some 12,000 metres (eight miles) into the sky, they calculate. Most of Antarctica is seismically stable. But its western part lies on a rift in Earth's crust that gives rise to...

Warm temperatures melted an area of western Antarctica that adds up to the size of California in January 2005, scientists report. {That is the middle of summer in the southern hemisphere.} Satellite data collected by the scientists between July 1999 and July 2005 showed clear signs that melting had occurred in multiple distinct regions, including far inland and at high latitudes and elevations, where melt had been considered unlikely. ---SNIP--- Evidence of melting was found up to 560 miles inland from the open ocean, farther than 85 degrees south (about 310 miles from the South Pole) and higher than 6,600...

OSLO, Norway (AP) - Nearly 300 passengers, including 119 Americans, were awaiting rescue Wednesday from a Norwegian cruise ship that ran aground off a remote Antarctic island, damaging its hull. The M/S Nordkapp got off the rocks under its own steam and sought shelter in a nearby harbor, where it was awaiting the arrival later Wednesday of another Norwegian Coastal Voyage ship, the M/S Nordnorge, the cruise operator said. The company said no one was hurt in Tuesday's mishap in the Southern Ocean and the Nordkapp was not in danger. "The ship is now at anchor in Walker Bay, and...

ROSS ICE SHELF, Antarctica (Reuters) - From a distance, the ANDRILL operation appears out of nowhere like a mirage: a white-draped tower amid giant blue boxcars laid out on a frozen sea. But this mammoth venture to drill through ice, ocean and back through time is as real as a science lab and as practical as an oil rig: hard-hatted drillers and scientists work in concert to find clues to a time when Antarctica was warm and wet. Because the researchers are convinced that a warmer age is in prospect as a result of human-spurred global climate change, they want...

The theory of global warming proposes that man's activities are causing the Earth to heat up, but there is compelling scientific evidence that does not support this conclusion.   Very few people have heard of the Larsen B ice shelf. For thousands of years in the Antarctic, the place was a desolate frozen wasteland, crisscrossed by crevasses and swept by powerful ice and snowstorms. Beginning in 2002, satellite imagery began to show instability in the Larsen B ice shelf. According to research published by the journal Nature, much of the more than 4,600 square mile ice shelf collapsed. Since then, icebergs...

Earthquake Details Magnitude 6.9 (Strong) Date-Time Sunday, August 20, 2006 at 03:41:47 (UTC) = Coordinated Universal Time Sunday, August 20, 2006 at 1:41:47 AM = local time at epicenter Location 61.024°S, 34.371°W Depth 10 km (6.2 miles) set by location program Region SCOTIA SEA Distances 495 km (305 miles) WSW of Bristol Island, South Sandwich Islands 630 km (390 miles) SW of Visokoi Island, South Sandwich Islands 680 km (425 miles) E of Coronation Island, South Orkney Islands 3240 km (2010 miles) N of South Pole, Antarctica Location Uncertainty horizontal +/- 8.5 km (5.3 miles); depth fixed by location program Parameters...

SYDNEY (AFP) - Trees could be growing in the Antarctic within a century because of global warming, an international scientific conference heard. With carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere set to double in the next 100 years, the icy continent could revert to how it looked about 40 million years ago, said Professor Robert Dunbar of Stanford University. "It was warm and there were bushes and there were trees," he told some 850 delegates in the Tasmanian capital Hobart, the national AAP news agency reported. The delegates are attending the combined meetings of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research and...

Two new studies of gases trapped in Antarctic ice cores have extended the record of Earth's past climate almost 50 percent further, adding another 210,000 years of definitive data about the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere and providing more evidence of current atmospheric change. The research is being published in the journal Science by participants in the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica. It's "an amazing accomplishment we would not have thought possible" as recently as 10 years ago, said Ed Brook, a professor of geosciences at Oregon State University, who analyzed the studies in the same issue of...

A huge wandering iceberg is tearing up the Antarctic like a slow-moving bull in a frozen China shop. The roaving destructor, named B-15A, slammed into the Drygalski ice tongue a month ago and broke off at least two city-sized chunks. Now it is poised to strike another feature sticking out from the continent. At 71 miles (115 kilometers) long, B-15A is the largest free-floating object in the world. It is expected to lumber into the Aviator Glacier any day now, scientists with the European Space Agency said Tuesday. The researchers released a satellite image taken May 16. Aviator was discovered...

'It is an event so large that the best seat in the house is in space: a massive iceberg is on a collision course with a floating glacier near the McMurdo Research Station in Antarctica. NASA satellites have witnessed the 100-mile-long B-15A iceberg moving steadily towards the Drygalski Ice Tongue. Though the iceberg's pace has slowed in recent days, NASA scientists expect a collision to occur no later than January 15, 2005.'

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

Remote viewing possible A satellite using intelligent software has alerted boffins that a volcano in the Antarctic is erupting. Normally if Mt Erebus erupts, the only witnesses would be the penguins who don't tend to talk about it and scientists wouldn't be aware of it for months. However, since they jacked in the software into NASA's Earth Observing-1 spacecraft that can make its own scientific observations without being asked, scientists have snapped the event. The software was developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, it scanned pictures an instrument highly sensitive to heat released from molten lava. After it detected heat...

Following the reception of a distress call early this morning, a massive search for 63 year-old Jenny Murray and her co-pilot, Colin Bodil began and culminated in their successful rescue. It was thought that the pair, who were attempting to be the first people to fly around the world from pole to pole had ditched in the icy waters south of the Falkland Islands.  Though Mrs. Murray sustained a broken arm and her co-pilot suffered chest injuries, they erected a tent in –40C temperatures. The 63 year old Grandmother and her co-pilot will be flown to Punta Arenas in...

More Sci-Fi reading for your summer weekend: Javed Ikbal writes "Decipher by Stel Pavlou is a mind-blowing work of science fiction. If you thought Stephenson's Snowcrash did a great job of bringing myth and science together, bite into this. I am still shaking my head over the amount of research that must have gone into this book." Read on for Javed's review. Warning -- spoilers within. What it's about: Tag line: Mankind had 12,000 years to decipher the message. We have one week left ... Let me make something clear. Although this is my first Slashdot review, I do not...