After two decades of hardwork, on 5 February 2012, a team of Russian scientists began drilling at Lake Vostok, the largest of more than 140 sub-glacial lakes and the most deeply buried of the lakes hidden under the Antarctic ice cap.

Using satellite laser altimetry, basal melting of ice shelves is determined to be the main driver of Antarctic ice-sheet loss, with changing climate the likely cause.

Of the West Antarctic ice shelves, those in the Amundsen Sea sector have given the most cause for concern. Ocean modelling of the Weddell Sea region, together with a detailed survey of the ice bed morphology, indicates that this region, too, may change soon.

Using over 1.6 million profiles of salinity, potential temperature, and neutral density from historical archives and the international Argo Program, this study develops the three-dimensional field of multidecadal linear change for ocean-state properties. The period of analysis extends from 1950 to 2008, taking care to minimize the aliasing associated with the seasonal and major global El Niño–Southern Oscillation modes. Large, robust, and spatially coherent multidecadal linear trends in salinity to 2000-dbar depth are found.

The redirection of warm water under the Filchner–Ronne Ice Shelf during the second half of this century could cause the ice-shelf base to melt at a rate 20 times higher than at present.

Climate simulations based on an ocean model may hold the key to understanding why existing climate models have failed to deliver a clear picture of ocean circulation during the last ice age.

Clouds and aerosol particles have bedevilled climate modellers for decades. Now researchers are starting to gain the upper hand.

This study investigates changes in the mixed layer depth (MLD) in the North Pacific Ocean in response to global warming and their impact on primary production by comparing outputs from 11 models of the coupled model intercomparison projects phase 3. The MLD in the 21st century decreases in most regions of the North Pacific, whereas the spatial pattern of the MLD is nearly unchanged. The overall shoaling results in part from intensified upper-ocean stratification caused by both surface warming and freshening.

Data from the satellite-based Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I) show that the total atmospheric moisture content over oceans has increased by 0.41 kg/m2 per decade since 1988. Results from current climate models indicate that water vapor increases of this magnitude cannot be explained by climate noise alone. In a formal detection and attribution analysis using the pooled results from 22 different climate models, the simulated “fingerprint” pattern of anthropogenically caused changes in water vapor is identifiable with high statistical confidence in the SSM/I data.

Climate models and satellite observations both indicate that the total amount of water in the atmosphere will increase at a rate of 7% per kelvin of surface warming. However, the climate models predict that global precipitation will increase at a much slower rate of 1 to 3% per kelvin. A recent analysis of satellite observations does not support this prediction of a muted response of precipitation to global warming. Rather, the observations suggest that precipitation and total atmospheric water have increased at about the same rate over the past two decades.