Entries by Sage Lichtenwalner

Upside Down Ocean: Unraveling the Crisis of Antarctic Sea Ice

Climate change is having a dramatic effect on Antarctic sea ice. For years, ice around the continent seemed oddly consistent, while sea ice in the Arctic has declined dramatically. But that is no longer the case. Over the last few years, the seasonal sea ice coverage in Antarctica has declined precipitously. In 2023, we had […]

/by

New Paper: 60 years of glacial retreat behind Palmer Station

In a new short paper, Megan Cimino, Marissa Goerke, and Shavonna Bent document how the Marr Glacier behind Palmer Station has retreated over the past 60 years. They found that the glacier has retreated about 7.7 meters per year, which they reflect can have profound impacts on the local ecosystem. Cimino, M. A., Goerke, M. A., […]

/by

Fast Company on the Five-Sigma Event

Earlier this summer (for those of us in the northern hemisphere), as Antarctica reached it’s peak winter season, scientists observed what came to be known as a “five-sigma event” in Antarctic Sea Ice. This referred to the unprecedented record low maximum sea ice extent observed this year, which far surpassed previous records. Oscar Schofield, the […]

/by

Associated Press: Antarctic Krill Fishing

This month, PAL LTER scientists Deborah Steinberg, Logan Pallin, Ari Friedlaender, and Joe Cope were featured in a story by the Associated Press. Factory fishing in Antarctica for krill targets the cornerstone of a fragile ecosystemBy Joshua Goodman and David Keyton, October 13, 2023 Here is a snippet… Jars of krill line the windowsills in […]

/by

Palmer penguins featured on WHYY’s The Pulse

In April, the podcast series The Pulse from WHYY in Philadelphia featured an episode about Taking the Temperature of Climate Science. One segment featured our own Megan Cimino and her work studying the Adélie penguin population around Palmer Station. Also featured were Mark Moline and Matthew Breece from the University of Delaware, who are using […]

/by

New Paper: Depth drives the distribution of microbial ecological functions in the coastal western Antarctic Peninsula

Congrats to Avishek Dutta and the team for their recent paper in Frontiers in Microbiology. Here’s the abstract… The Antarctic marine environment is a dynamic ecosystem where microorganisms play an important role in key biogeochemical cycles. Despite the role that microbes play in this ecosystem, little is known about the genetic and metabolic diversity of […]

/by

2023 PAL-LTER, SWARM, and Friends Workshop

Four years is a long time to wait, but last week, the waiting was over, as we held the first in-person PAL-LTER and Friends Science Workshop since 2019. On Tuesday, the PI team met to discuss the latest field season and to prepare for the challenges of next one. And then on Wednesday and Thursday, […]

/by

An Adélie Penguin on the cover of Ecosphere

Kudos to PAL researcher Darren Roberts, whose photo of an Adélie Penguin was featured on the March 2023 issue of Ecosphere, the journal of the Ecological Society of America. The photo was chosen to feature a recent paper, Long-term patterns in ecosystem phenology near Palmer Station, Antarctica, from the perspective of the Adélie penguin, by […]

/by