The Blog

If all the ice in Antarctica melted the world’s sea levels would rise approximately 61 metres. Image shows how the UK might look if all of the Antarctic ice melted. Sourc…

The Coldest Journey’s equipment specialist Steve Holland is featured in today’s Independent. When not putting Ice Team members through their paces and testing equipment down to nearly -60C in cold chambers, Steve likes to get busy blowing things up! Follow this link to read more about his work.

There are 17 species of penguin in the world and five of these breed in the Antarctic; the Emperor penguin is the only one to breed in the Antarctic winter. Image: Adults and juvenile emperor penguins, by Ian Duffy,…

The post below was written by co-leader of The Coldest Journey, Anton Bowring, with specific reference to comments made by Fred Pohl and Bob Searle. Whilst it is not our policy to reply to such criticisms directly, it was felt in this case that a response was appropriate. On June 19th Mr Pohl posted on Facebook: “If Fuchs [making reference to Vivian Fuchs, whose team made the first overland…

A nunatak is an isolated rocky peak that is sticking up through an ice sheet.

Richmond wearing sleep monitor By Brian Newham We are now in the midst of another five-day series of tests as part of the White Mars project. We do these tests every 28 days, and because they take about four hours for each of us to go through the process we stagger them over five days. For those of you who don’t know already, the White Mars project aims to examine the physiological and…

The Pole of Inaccessibility is the point on the Antarctic continent which is furthest from any coast. The Russian research station Vostok is not far away.The location is marked by a bust of Vladimir Lenin facing Moscow and is protected as a historical site. Inside the small station there, there is a golden visitor’s book for those who make it to…

One of the ‘White Mars’ experiments which the Ice Team are conducting, in conjunction with the Center for Space Medicine in Berlin, is to investigate how isolation and other environmental factors affect brain function, sleep quality, and the autonomic nervous system. Today the Ice Team had a conference call with a symposium of European researchers who are interested in human physical and…

The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) is based in Cambridge, England, and for over 60 years has undertaken much of the UK’s scientific research in Antarctica. BAS employs over 400 staff, and supports three stations in the Antarctic, at Rothera, Halley (see image) and Signy, and two stations on South Georgia, at King Edward Point and Bird Island. The Antarctic operations and science programmes ar…

This photograph of the camp was taken by Brian Newham several hours ago. It’s going to be weeks yet until it starts getting light again.