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Antarctica will likely set an alarming new record this year

As surging global temperatures alter the landscape of the Arctic, scientists are observing what's shaping up to be a new record at the other end of the globe.

Preliminary data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center suggests Antarctica will likely set a record this year for the lowest sea ice extent — the area of ocean covered by sea ice. On Wednesday, sea ice around the continent dropped lower than the previous record minimum set in March 2017.

"What's going on in the Antarctic is an extreme event," Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the University of Colorado Boulder and lead scientist at NSIDC, told CNN. "But we've been through this a bit."

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What he means by "this" is a roller coaster of sea ice extent over the past couple of decades, swinging wildly from record highs to record lows. Unlike the Arctic, where scientists say climate change is accelerating its impacts, Antarctica's sea ice extent is highly variable.

"There's a link between what's going on in Antarctica and the general warming trend around the rest of the world, but it's different from what we see in mountain glaciers and what we see in the Arctic," he added.

Satellite data that stretches back to 1978 shows the region was still producing record-high sea ice extent as recently as 2014 and 2015. Then it suddenly plunged in 2016 and has stayed lower-than-average since.

"That kind of drop is pretty much unprecedented in the record," Marilyn Raphael, geography professor and director at UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, told CNN. "Antarctic sea ice does vary from year to year, but that was a bigger variation than what normally happens."

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In this undated file photo, a lonely penguin appears in Antarctica during the southern hemisphere's summer season.

Scientists say the recent shift doesn't yet necessarily signify a change in the long-term trend. But Professor Raphael said the sea ice is retreating earlier now, which can be concerning.

"There are two parts of me that answer this — the scientist part says, 'wait a little bit longer and see.' That's my cautious part," Professor Raphael said.

"Then the other part of me says, this is unusual variation in the ice. The degree is unusual, and it could be that that's a sign that climate is changing, and that's the speculation part."

The rate of sea ice loss in the Arctic and the Antarctic differs in part due to their location and proximity to other continents. In the Arctic, surrounded by land, sea ice forms and extends throughout Europe, Asia, North America and Greenland. Meanwhile, the Antarctic is a large continent surrounded by a vast ocean where sea ice can stretch across the Southern Ocean.

Dr Scambos said because continents are warming rapidly, snow cover is melting earlier than usual and exposing the dark surface of the ground, which absorbs more heat, causing the Arctic to melt faster. In contrast, the Antarctic stays covered in ice, which reflects sunlight and keeps the surrounding air cooler.

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Despite the complex climate signals in Antarctica's record low sea ice, scientists point out that the increasing warming trend in the polar regions amplifies the consequences of the crisis globally.

"Polar regions really have a way of making these small changes a bigger deal," Dr Scambos said, "either through sea-level rise, which is the main cause for concern from Antarctica, or through warmer climate generally, because the Arctic is sort of the air conditioner for the places where most of us live in the Northern Hemisphere."

He adds it would take more than a decade of a persistent downward trend in order to link the dwindling sea ice in the Antarctic to climate change, even though temperature conditions in many parts of Antarctica are already exhibiting a warming trend.

But on the continent itself, some alarming effects of climate change have started to take shape: Just last year, researchers, including Dr Scambos, observed that the critical ice shelf holding back the Thwaites glacier in western Antarctica could shatter within the next three to five years, which could result in devastating sea-level rise.

From their camp in the middle of the Antarctic to their stations on the coast, researchers flew over the gargantuan Thwaites glacier, also known as the "Doomsday Glacier," for two hours.

Antarctica's Thwaites glacier is known as the "Doomsday glacier," due to the serious risk it poses during its melting process.

Dr Scambos said they could see "massive cracks in this ice shelf, places where the ice is tearing apart."

He said it's an example of how the climate change impact in one very specific location could have consequences for the entire planet.

"The trends have rearranged a little bit because fundamentally over the last four decades, Antarctica has just been pushed around by the changes in ocean temperature and wind," said Dr Scambos.

"The thing about Antarctica and sea ice is it is very unconstrained, sort of at the mercy of wind patterns, storms, snowfall, and ocean temperatures — all these things have an impact."

He said that the only rational way to tackle climate change is to rapidly adapt to the impacts and slash the planet-warming emissions that are the root cause of the crisis and have thrown our planet's most pristine places, such as the Antarctic, into a downward spiral.

Recalling his time in West Antarctica, Dr Scambos said he looked in the horizon with the cracking ice shelf holding back the Doomsday glacier in the background, and saw sobering signs of what's likely to happen in the future. He realised how much more climate research needs to be done.

"It raises your level of concern quite a bit," he said.

"I won't say it's scary because you're not scared in the moment. You're in awe of what's going on here."

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Mesmerising rover footage captures rare sight above Mars

NASA has released video of thick, swirling clouds that formed high above Mars and were captured by the Curiosity rover.

The videos were taken in December 2021 as the device took a break from collecting rock and soil samples from the surface of the red planet.

Martian clouds are relatively rare due to the planet's thin atmosphere, and these have a distinct chemical composition.

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NASA's Curiosity rover captured these images of clouds in the sky of Mars, on December 12, 2021.

"These clouds are very high, nearly 80 kilometres above the surface," NASA wrote in a blog post.

"It's extremely cold at that height, which suggests these clouds are composed of carbon dioxide ice as opposed to water ice clouds, which are typically found at lower altitude."

The space agency explained special imaging techniques were needed to see the clouds, as they're faint in the atmosphere.

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It's believed the clouds captured above Mars are composed of carbon dioxide ice.

"Multiple images are taken to be able to get a clear, static background.

"These images show the clouds as they were seen drifting directly above Curiosity.

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NASA's Curiosity rover has been on a nearly decade-long mission to determine if Mars was ever habitable for living organisms.

The clouds were seen on December 12, 2021, the 3325th Martian day, or sol, of the mission.

Curiosity's mission is to determine whether the Red Planet ever was habitable to microbial life.

It landed in the Gale Crater nearly 10 years ago on August 5, 2012.

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What could have sent hundreds of blackbirds crashing to their death in Mexico

A swarm of hundreds of birds plummeted to the ground outside your house. Carcasses lay strewed in the street, the birds killed from the impact.

That's the view a handful of people woke up to in Chihuahua, Mexico, on February 7.

Millions around the world got a front-row seat of the massacre when security camera footage was released of the event, but it left people with more questions than answers.

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Why did the birds crash?

"The cause of this bizarre and troubling incident is honestly anybody's guess at this point," said Carlos Botero, assistant professor of biology at Washington University in St. Louis.

The footage didn't show the entire swarm of birds, but Botero hypothesised that they could have flown through a cloud of lethal chemicals. Autopsies of the dead bird specimens would need to be completed to determine if that was the case, he said.

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A predator could have also sent the birds frantically flying away, Mr Botero added.

Richard Broughton, an ornithologist at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, was almost certain the manoeuvre was to avoid a predator like a peregrine falcon.

"Blackbirds form tight flocks, called a 'murmuration,' that swirls in the sky to try and confuse the falcon so it cannot pick a target," Broughton said via email.

To combat this strategy, the falcon dives straight into the flock of birds to separate out a target, Mr Broughton explained. When this happens, the blackbirds try to avoid it.

In the video, viewers are likely seeing the birds try and escape a predator that attacked them from above, he said. The birds headed down, but some could not pull up fast enough, Mr Broughton added.

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Experts identified the birds as yellow-headed blackbirds, migratory birds living in the western and prairie wetlands of North America.

Assuming the time stamp of 7.42 pm local time on the video is accurate, the birds were likely leaving their nocturnal roost nearby, said Andrew Farnsworth, senior research associate at The Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York.

In addition to the predatory theory, Mr Farnsworth suggested that a loud noise startling the birds was another possibility. This has happened in the past with other species of birds, he said.

How common is this behaviour?

It's very rare for birds to crash into the ground, and it's not normal behaviour, Mr Botero said.

There are other occurrences of birds dying from abrupt crashing, Mr Farnsworth said.

In 1999, about 110 king eiders, a type of large sea duck, were found dead on Baffin Island in Canada. There weren't any obstacles in their way, so it's likely they crashed because of poor visibility, which could be attributed to the cataracts in their eyes, a study found.

In 1985 and 2003, dozens of geese were found dead in fields in southern Manitoba, Canada. Researchers initially thought they were poisoned, but the severe injuries the geese sustained hinted that they could have become disoriented on the moonless nights or been frightened by a thunderstorm.

What are these birds?

Experts identified the birds as yellow-headed blackbirds, migratory birds living in the western and prairie wetlands of North America. In the winter they form large flocks, which is what was caught on video.

The eBird, an online database of bird observations, at The Cornell Lab of Ornithology tracks these birds' migration pattern on a map as they fly south to Mexico for the winter then back to the United States and Canada for the summer.

At the time the footage was recorded, most the birds would have been in Mexico with a few scattered in the Southwestern United States.