What is beneath the world’s largest ice sheet? Compiled by the British Antarctic Survey and made from “millions of new measurements, including substantial data sets from NASA’s ICESat satellite and an airborne mission called Operation IceBridge,” this animated map of the changing Antarctic Ice Sheet reveals the bedrock terrain below with a level of detail never seen before.

Read more about decades of data: Peeling Back the Ice of Antarctica by Wired’s Adam Mann.

Marine scientist and Stanford PhD student Cassandra Brooks narrates a two month long time-lapse view from an ice breaker — a specially-designed ship with “a strengthened hull, an ice-clearing shape, and the power to push through sea ice.”

Cassandra joined the Nathaniel B. Palmer research vessel in the Ross Sea, Antarctica, to track the phytoplankton bloom and study organic carbon in the waters as the seasons shift from summer to autumn. She’s also exploring the balance between the region’s fishing industry — Antarctic toothfish are caught here and later sold on the market as “Chilean sea bass” — with the conservation of this remote and celebrated ecosystem for scientific study.

via National Geographic’s Ocean Views.

More videos from Antarctica are in the archives. 

Two South African filmmakers and ecologists travel to South Georgia Island and Antarctica to film the animals that live on the seventh continent. In this episode from EarthTouch.tv, meet the trusting seals and penguins they find in this beautiful place that has no major land predators. 

You can watch Earth Touch’s entire Antarctica series here. There’s also more Antarctica in the archives.

via Climate Adaptation.

A series of clumsy penguin outtakes from the BBC’s Penguins - Spy in the Huddle, narrated by David Tennant. (Updated video link.) The documentary team disguised 50 cameras — as penguins, rocks, snowballs, etc — to capture three species: Emperor Penguins, Rockhoppers and Humboldts. Here’s a clip of one of the hidden penguin cams among Emperors:

And here are two more Emperor penguin clips: how an egg is laid in cold and a baby penguin’s first steps. 

via Neatorama.

When you drill 364 meters (1194 feet) down into Antarctic ice, taking out a cylindrical section called an ice core, you can find out about the Earth’s temperature and carbon dioxide levels from over 20,000 years ago. Information is held within the oxygen atoms in the ice and the air bubbles that formed within it.

Measuring ice cores is an effective form of time travel for scientists like the British Antarctic Survey team, who are studying how the Earth’s climate is changing. And Antarctica is full of untapped information:

Antarctica is thought to have been covered by ice for over 30 million years. So far, scientists have drilled ice cores stretching back 800,000 years, and they are now working to extend their records back to 1.4 million years ago.

In this video, Ice Core Scientist Nerilie Abram explains the process. You can also read more about the team’s work here.