Current global warming necessitates a detailed understanding of the relationships between climate and global ice volume. Highly resolved and continuous sea-level records are essential for quantifying ice-volume changes. However, an unbiased study of the timing of past ice-volume changes, relative to polar climate change, has so far been impossible because available sea-level records either were dated by using orbital tuning or ice-core timescales, or were discontinuous in time.

A new model of glacial isostatic adjustment used in conjunction with GRACE satellite data suggests that ice loss from Antarctica is contributing 0.19 millimetres per year to global mean sea level, which is substantially less than previous GRACE-based estimates.

Rich in fish, minerals and scientific potential, the seas around Antarctica are among the planet’s most pristine waters — but fishing vessels are already moving in. Next week, negotiators at a meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR, pronounced ‘cam-lar’) may try to contain the accelerating rush to access the region’s natural resources. At stake is one of the planet’s last great wildernesses — as well as the credibility of the international body set up to protect Antarctica’s marine life.

Adopting sequential extraction procedures, Ba, Cu, Mn, Ni, V and Zn concentrations were determined in the moderately reducible, organically bound, carbonateassociated and adsorbable fractions within a sediment core collected from the Indian sector of the Southern Ocean. The elemental abundances were studied with reference to the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), deglaciation and Holocene periods. The study showed, with the exception of Ba, elemental abundances in the following order: moderately reducible > organically bound > carbonate-associated > adsorbable fractions.