Description: Antarctic and Southern Ocean science is vital to understanding natural variability, the processes that govern global change and the role of humans in the Earth and climate system. The potential for new knowledge to be gained from future Antarctic science is substantial. Therefore, the international Antarctic community came together to ‘scan the horizon’ to identify the highest priority scientific questions that researchers should aspire to answer in the next two decades and beyond. Wide consultation was a fundamental principle for the development of a collective, international view of the most important future directions in Antarctic science. From the many possibilities, the horizon scan identified 80 key scientific questions through structured debate, discussion, revision and voting. Questions were clustered into seven topics: i)Antarctic atmosphere and global connections, ii) Southern Ocean and sea ice in a warming world, iii) ice sheet and sea level, iv) the dynamic Earth, v) life on the precipice, vi) near-Earth space and beyond, and vii) human presence in Antarctica. Answering the questions identified by the horizon scan will require innovative experimental designs, novel applications of technology, invention of next-generation field and laboratory approaches, and expanded observing systems and networks. Unbiased, non-contaminating procedures will be required to retrieve the requisite air, biota, sediment, rock, ice and water samples. Sustained year-round access toAntarctica and the Southern Ocean will be essential to increase winter-time measurements. Improved models are needed that represent Antarctica and the Southern Ocean in the Earth System, and provide predictions at spatial and temporal resolutions useful for decision making. A co-ordinated portfolio of cross-disciplinary science, based on new models of international collaboration, will be essential as no scientist, programme or nation can realize these aspirations alone.

Description: Seismic surveys are frequently a matter of concern regarding their potentially negative impacts on marine mammals. In the Southern Ocean, which provides a critical habitat for several endangered cetacean species, seismic research activities are undertaken at a circumpolar scale. In order to minimize impacts of these surveys, pre-cruise planning requires detailed, spatio-temporally resolved knowledge on the likelihood of encountering these species in the survey area. In this publication we present predictive habitat modelling as a potential tool to support decisions for survey planning. We associated opportunistic sightings (2005–2011) of humpback (Megaptera novaeangliae, N=93) and Antarctic minke whales (Balaenoptera bonaerensis, N=139) with a range of static and dynamic environmental variables. A maximum entropy algorithm (Maxent) was used to develop habitat models and to calculate daily basinwide/circumpolar prediction maps to evaluate how species-specific habitat conditions evolved throughout the spring and summer months. For both species, prediction maps revealed considerable changes in habitat suitability throughout the season. Suitable humpback whale habitat occurred predominantly in ice-free areas, expanding southwards with the retreating sea ice edge, whereas suitable Antarctic minke whale habitat was consistently predicted within sea ice covered areas. Daily, large-scale prediction maps provide a valuable tool to design layout and timing of seismic surveys as they allow the identification and consideration of potential spatio-temporal hotspots to minimize potential impacts of seismic surveys on Antarctic cetacean species.

Description: Polar ice sheets play a fundamental role in Earth's climate system, by interacting actively and passively with the environment. Active interactions include the creeping flow of ice and its effects on polar geomorphology, global sea level, ocean and atmospheric circulation, and so on. Passive interactions are mainly established by the formation of climate records within the ice, in form of air bubbles, dust particles, salt microinclusions and other derivatives of airborne impurities buried by recurrent snowfalls. For a half-century scientists have been drilling deep ice cores in Antarctica and Greenland for studying such records, which can go back to around a million years. Experience shows, however, that the ice-sheet flow generally disrupts the stratigraphy of the bottom part of deep ice cores, destroying the integrity of the oldest records. For all these reasons glaciologists have been studying the microstructure of polar ice cores for decades, in order to understand the genesis and fate of ice-core climate records, as well as to learn more about the physical properties of polar ice, aiming at better climate-record interpretations and ever more precise models of ice-sheet dynamics. In this Part I we review the main difficulties and advances in deep ice core drilling in Antarctica and Greenland, together with the major contributions of deep ice coring to the research on natural ice microstructures. In particular, we discuss in detail the microstructural findings from Camp Century, Byrd, Dye 3, GRIP, GISP2, NorthGRIP, Vostok, Dome C, EDML, and Dome Fuji, besides commenting also on the earlier results of some pioneering ventures, like the Jungfraujoch Expedition and the Norwegian–British–Swedish Antarctic Expedition, among others. In the companion Part II of this work ( Faria et al., 2014), the review proceeds with a survey of the state-of-the-art understanding of natural ice microstructures and some exciting prospects in this field of research.