Antarctic sea ice whipped into stunning shapes by strong wind in amazing image

14 March 2024 , 22:45

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Antarctica is so inhospitable that it's the only continent without any permanent human settlement (Image: De Agostini via Getty Images)

An incredible image shows Antarctic sea ice being whipped into stunning shapes by strong winds.

The scene was presented as Picture of the Day on Thursday by Copernicus, the Earth Observation component of the European Union's space programme. Copernicus wrote: "In Antarctica, katabatic winds (strong winds caused by high pressure differences) contribute to the continent's extreme climate. Sometimes they can reach hurricane force and shape the sea ice, as it happened off the Inexpressive Island on 6 March."

The image was captured by the Sentinel-2 satellite, which monitors changes in land cover, vegetation, and coastal areas over time. Inexpressible Island is a small, rocky island in Terra Nova Bay in Antarctica.

Back in 2017, the same type of winds resulted in the formation of a rare phenomenon spotted by scientist in Antarctica. Known as 'dragon ice', the dramatic natural formation occurs when intense wind buffets water around even as it freezes.

At the time, Dr Guy Williams, a member of the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania and one of the researchers who noticed the scale-like ice, said: "Dragon-skin ice is very rare, bizarre, evidence of a darker chaos in the cryospheric realm, not seen in Antarctica since 2007.

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"Imagine your standard ice cube tray, filled once. After a week, you get one tray of ice cubes. But if you empty and re-fill the tray each night, you get so much more. That is what the katabatic winds are doing in the polynya, removing the ice, exposing the water, and making more ice form."

This incredible image of the wind shaping the Antarctica sea was captured by the Sentinel-2 satellite (Copernicus EU/Sentinel-2 / SWNS)

More recently, one intrepid traveller made his way to one of the hardest to reach tourist attractions in the world - a small wooden hut at Cape Royds, next to Pony Lake in Antarctica. Famed explorer Ernest Shackleton and his men built the structure in 1907 on an ice-free area of rock and has been preserved ever since.

Matty Jordan, who lives at Scott Base on the continent, posted a video on TikTok showing his exploration of the hut. Boxes of maize, dog kennels, pony feed boxes, and a wheel from an Arrol-Johnston car remained alongside canned meats and vegetables, bottles of raspberries and gooseberries, and red currants wrapped in straw. Amazingly, 115 years have passed and nothing had changed.

Dean Murray