antarctic

This four-stage pattern of structural decline may be a signal for other Antarctic ice shelves that appear to be entering similar phases of weakness.

Mosses are well known for surviving in places that challenge most life, including the Himalayan peaks, the scorching deserts of Death Valley, the Antarctic tundra, and the cooling surfaces of active volcanoes.

A glacier on the Eastern Antarctic Peninsula has undergone the quickest ice loss documented in modern times, according to a major international study co-authored by Swansea University.

"It paints a pretty stark and harrowing picture," Connor Bamford, a marine ecologist at the British Antarctic Survey and lead author of the study, told AFP.

Understanding this chain reaction offers crucial insight into why Antarctic ice sheets may be inherently unstable, both in the distant past and in the modern era.