A new study shows that atmospheric rivers may be responsible for up to 90% of Antarctica’s annual precipitation.
A new study shows that atmospheric rivers may be responsible for up to 90% of Antarctica’s annual precipitation.
Deep below Antarctica, clues to an ancient puzzle with cosmic origins have remained trapped in the southernmost continent’s ice for tens of thousands of years—until now.
Researchers have unearthed new evidence of the presence of iron-60, a rare radioactive isotope of iron linked to stellar explosions, captured in Antarctic ice estimated to be up to 80,000 years old.
Because this rare iron isotope cannot form naturally on Earth under most circumstances, its origin is likely traced to the deaths of massive stars, in cataclysmic cosmic events that eject rare-Earth isotopes like iron-60 during supernova explosions.
Fortunately, this radioactive cosmic messenger, which has a half-life of around 2.6 million years, can be preserved following such large-scale cosmic events, becoming entombed in deep-sea sediments and in ice covering the surface of Antarctica.
The result is what scientists liken to the ancient cosmic “fingerprints” of past stellar cataclysms that can be traced all the way to Earth. The discovery was reported in a paper published in Physical Review Letters.
Despite being one of the least-mapped surfaces in the entire Solar System by some estimates, over the last 35-million years, the accumulation of ice on Antarctica’s surface has slowly preserved a veritable “time capsule” of information about our planet’s geological past.
Accessing this deep geological history is as simple as drilling cores deep into Antarctica’s ice, which formed the basis of research led by German astrophysicist Dominik Koll, a researcher with the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, a Dresden-based research laboratory, which began in 2019.
However, the initial discoveries that prompted this research required no drilling at all—initial examination of fresh snow in Antarctica had already revealed the presence of iron-60, prompting a deeper search for past accumulations of this rare-Earth isotope.
Based on ice core analysis, additional signatures associated with stellar explosions have now been discovered deeper in our planet’s icy Antarctic archives, dating back to periods between around 40,000 and 81,000 years ago.
Koll and his colleagues relied on samples collected in association with a research effort called the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica, or EPICA, in which portions of the ice cores were melted to reveal the presence of iron-60, which they counted atom-for-atom.
As they had hoped to find, a greater number of iron-60 atoms was present than would be expected based solely on background sources, meaning the rest is almost certainly of cosmic origin.
Intriguingly, the fact that far lower concentrations of iron-60 appeared to be present in ice from Earth’s long distant past, when compared to samples like those from fresh snow obtained by Koll and his team beginning in 2019, suggest that the region of space our Solar System is currently traversing, known as the Local Interstellar Cloud (LIC), is effectively “a cosmic archive for supernova-produced [iron-60].”
Based on this, Koll and his colleagues report that the imprinted iron-60 profile over time points to strong evidence for changes in the local interstellar environment over the last 80,000 years, as represented in the EPICA ice samples.
Presently, astronomers are uncertain about the origins of the LIC, although the new findings suggest it has undergone significant changes over the last 100,000 years or so.
One thing that seems evident, based on the changes in the abundance of iron-60 throughout time, is that the LIC appears to have regions that possess more of it than others—very likely leftover from past stellar explosions.
Fundamentally, Koll and his colleagues say their recent findings align well with a supernova origin for the samples they uncovered, offering a unique opportunity to probe the ongoing mysteries of the LIC using relatively easily accessible ice cores from our planet’s southern continent.
The team’s findings were reported in a recent paper, “Local Interstellar Cloud structure imprinted in Antarctic ice by supernova 60Fe,” which appeared in Physical Review Letters.
Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.
Antarctica has been impacted by three major events, which researchers have identified as a “perfect storm” that could finally initiate major melting on the icy continent, with major implications for exacerbating climate change.
According to new University of Southampton research, these events have begun a spiral that could move the global oceans from a hedge against climate change, to one of its primary drivers.
In a recent paper published in Science Advances, the team behind the study used satellite data to identify the root causes of record-low sea ice in the Antarctic and the potential future effects on the global climate.
While other parts of the world have been feeling the effects of global climate change for some time, it was only about a decade ago, in 2015, that Antarctic sea levels stopped rising and began retreating. The reason for this sudden reversal perplexed scientists until the University of Southampton team finally identified a series of Southern Ocean events that snowballed into a major climate concern, as they pulled up warm, salty water from below the surface.
By 2023, this chain of events had destroyed enough ice to cover Greenland, pushing the lows ever further.
“Antarctic sea ice in the Southern Ocean helps drive the planet’s ocean overturning circulation,” said lead author Dr. Aditya Narayanan, an oceanographer from the University of Southampton. “However, since 2015, the region has undergone a huge transformation, with extreme ice loss around the continent.”
“What started as a slow build-up of deep-sea heat under the Antarctic sea ice was followed by a violent mixing of water, ending in a vicious cycle where it’s too warm to let ice recover,” Dr. Narayanan says. “It’s concerning because massive loss of sea ice destabilizes the world’s ocean current systems, warming our planet far quicker than expected.”
The team used an advanced ice-measuring program that combined two approaches to identify three specific events responsible for the cascading ice loss.
“We use a combination of satellite observations and computer models — both of which are part of long-running international efforts,” Dr. Narayanan told The Debrief in an email. “The satellite data come from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), which compiles and distributes global sea ice records.”
“These measurements rely on instruments such as the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2), operated by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA),” Dr. Narayanan added. “These sensors can ‘see’ through clouds and darkness, allowing us to track sea ice year-round.”
The Southampton team then ran this data through the Southern Ocean State Estimate, an advanced computer model created at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
“This is not just a standalone simulation—it combines the laws of physics with real-world observations, such as temperature, salinity, and sea ice data,” Dr. Narayanan said. You can think of it as a model that is constantly guided by observations, so it stays close to what is actually happening in the ocean.”
The issues began around 2013, when strong winds raised Circumpolar Deep Water, a warm, salty solution from the deep. Then, in 2015, stronger winds mixed that water directly into the surface layer, producing the rapid ice loss observed at the time, concentrated in the east. By 2018, surface water had reached a threshold at which so much warm, salty water had surfaced that ice formation became difficult, reinforcing the cycle.
The team discovered that this oceanic ice loss is primarily occurring in the East Antarctic, where the deepwater upsurge is primarily occurring. The West is not in the clear, though, as intense cloud cover over the subtropics has now heated the ocean, leading to major ice melt between 2016 and 2019.
“More recent observations, including near-real-time data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center(NSIDC), show that parts of West Antarctica, especially near the Antarctic Peninsula, are again experiencing low sea ice in certain seasons,” Dr. Narayanan told The Debrief. “Without carrying out a specific study, it is difficult to pinpoint a single cause for these recent changes.”
“Most likely, they reflect a combination of atmospheric conditions, such as clouds and winds, and heat being delivered by the ocean,” Narayanan said.
“This isn’t just a regional problem, Antarctic sea ice acts as Earth’s mirror, reflecting solar radiation back into space,” said co-author Dr. Alessandro Silvano, also from the University of Southampton. “Its loss could destabilize the currents that store heat and carbon in the ocean, accelerating global warming, and also destabilize ice shelves that prevent glaciers from sliding into the sea, raising global sea levels.”
The researchers warn that anthropogenic climate change is fueling the warm winds driving these events in the Antarctic.
“Were these trends to persist, the planet could experience a ‘prolonged low sea-ice state,’” said co-author Professor Alberto Naveira Garabato from the University of Southampton.
“If the low sea-ice coverage prevails into 2030 and beyond, the ocean may transition from a stabilizer of the world’s climate to a powerful new driver of global warming,” Garabato added.
The paper, “Compound Drivers of Antarctic Sea Ice Loss and Southern Ocean Destratification,” appeared in Science Advances on May 8, 2026.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.
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