Large numbers of icebergs that drifted unusually far from Antarctica before melting into ocean waters have been key to initiating ice ages of the past, says a new study.

Research by Center for Climate and Life Fellow Pierre Dutrieux will lead to greater understanding of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet’s future stability and associated sea level rise.

The movement of sea ice between Arctic countries is expected to significantly increase this century, raising the risk of more widely transporting pollutants like microplastics and oil, according to new research.

The American Meteorological Society will award him the Henry Stommel Research Medal for his research on the Southern Ocean and inter-basin circulation.

Climate models predict that as a result of human-induced climate change, the surface of the Pacific Ocean should be warming. But one key part is not.

Starting this month, scientists aim to study the Antarctic Circumpolar Current’s past dynamics by drilling into the seabed in some of the planet’s remotest marine regions.

A new study suggests bacteria may respire more carbon dioxide from the shallow oceans to the air as seas warm, reducing the deep oceans’ ability to store carbon.

An Earth Institute oceanographer answers this deep question from a reader as part of our Earth Month Q&A on Instagram.

A million years ago, a longtime pattern of alternating glaciations and warm periods dramatically changed, when ice ages suddenly became longer and more intense. Scientists have long suspected that this was connected to the slowdown of a key Atlantic Ocean current system that today once again is slowing. A new study of sediments from the Atlantic bottom directly links this slowdown with a massive buildup of carbon dragged from the air into the abyss.

Newly analyzed drill cores taken from the bottom of Greece’s Gulf of Corinth show that sediment flow into the basin has varied dramatically over the past 500,000-plus years, as the earth passed in and out of ice ages, and humans later dominated the surrounding landscape.