Tanja Schlemm (she/her)

A lone gentoo penguin on the rocky shoreline.

An Antarctic shag perched on a rock with icebergs in Paradise Harbour in the background.

A leopard seal resting on ice in Paradise Harbour.

Two gentoo penguins on the beach at Stony Point, seemingly trying to decide what to do about the Weddell seal that is in their way (front centre of photo)

Day 9 of my voyage to the #Antarctic Peninsula on the #tallship #BarkEuropa (continued): a selection of wildlife photos taken at Stony Point.
#BusmansHoliday

YouTube video by Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM) Marlena's PhD story

What can a PhD in polar science look like? 🧊

We followed CPOM PhD researcher Marlena Holloway (@northumbriauni.bsky.social) during the first year of her PhD to find out 👇

youtu.be/m5d7wYl5hRo

This is figure 1, which shows a risk map of Antarctic ice catchment basins.

The results of a study in Nature Climate Change imply that the Antarctic Ice Sheet does not act as one single tipping element, but rather as several tipping systems interacting across drainage basins. go.nature.com/4rFXQ9q 🧪

But we got a very specific example of that recently, and specifically using Claude Code - the software cited in Zeke's post.

You can immediately see why corporations like Anthropic *refuse* to disclose absolute, total numbers for energy consumption, and stick with per-query numbers

OKAY BIG ONE FOR YA

NEW report out today: I dig deep into how big tech has been muddling tech types and overstating evidence to claim "AI" will make global emissions drop like a stone....

Not only will it not, it seems to be verifiably doing the opposite!!

ketanjoshi.co/2026/02/17/b... + 📼+🧵>

#RECCAP2 paper alert, Jemma Wadham led the polar chapter, summarizing knowns and (large) unknowns of carbon stocks and fluxes from ice sheets to land fringes, fjords, 🌊 oceans and sediments.🧪 Excellent reference starting point for future work.
agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...
@awi.de

East Antarctica has been the epicenter for unusually persistent blocking and atmospheric river landfalls that have resulted in some extreme high temperatures. From February 12-March 1, I've noted 5 distinct atmospheric river events observed/forecasted over Wilkes Land.

🇦🇶 Reminder: Share Your Views on Antarctica & the Southern Ocean! 🇦🇶

SCAR is updating its Antarctic and Southern Ocean Horizon Scan and wants to hear from you.

🔷 Submit your response by 1 March 2026: bit.ly/scar-horizon...

The fundamental premise behind AI-enabled cheating is that coursework is merely busy work, because your'e just doing it for professors.

We would never say that showing up for football practice is merely busy work because you're just doing it for your coaches.

This!👇
Armed conflict exacerbates climate change
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine drove greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) up by 75M tonnes CO2 equivalents -
comparable to the annual emissions of France

What happens in a war zones affects the entire globe as well as the local communities 😡🌍

A pointy brown mountain with a glacier in front of it and some turquoise icebergs in the lagoon in front of it - they almost look like whales at the surface. The sky above is bright blue.

Turquoise iceberg close-up - lots of bubbles and round shapes. There are some tiny areas that look a little pink/red at the top.

Blue iceberg layers, seen on a glacier. There are some patches of snow.

A green/turquoise glacier face with some smooth bits at the foot (with some snow on them) and some jagged bits in the sun behind, with the glacier in shadow behind coming down the hill side.

Haven't posted much colour recently, so here's some varying turquoise ice from Feb 2020.

#Iceland #AwesomeFoursome

Line graph time series of 2026's daily Arctic sea ice extent compared to decadal averages from the 1980s to the 2010s. The decadal averages are shown with different colored lines with purple for the 1980s, blue for the 1990s, green for the 2000s, and white for the 2010s. Thin white lines are also shown for each year from 2000 to 2025. 2026 is shown with a thick gold line. There is a long-term decreasing trend in ice extent for every day of the year shown on this graph between January and March by looking at the decadal average line positions.

Monday ice update - #Arctic sea ice extent is currently the 2nd lowest on record (JAXA data)

• about 410,000 km² below the 2010s mean
• about 1,000,000 km² below the 2000s mean
• about 1,510,000 km² below the 1990s mean
• about 1,970,000 km² below the 1980s mean

More: zacklabe.com/arctic-sea-i...

In a new review led by Prof @iceybethan.bsky.social we outline three possible futures for the Antarctic Peninsula.

The bottom line? Decisions we make in this decade will shape the region’s climate trajectory for decades and centuries to come. 🇦🇶❄️🧪

@cires.colorado.edu @colorado.edu

Running Models, Chasing Bugs – from Crashes to Convection Mantle convection may unfold the hidden stories of planetary interiors over billions of years, but geodynamic models can crash in milliseconds. While figures in papers often show smooth convective flo...

In this week’s blog, Prachi Kar shares the unfiltered reality of geodynamic modelling; crashes, segmentation faults and the emotional labor of debugging.

“Running a model makes you a user. Debugging makes you a geodynamicist.”

Read here:
blogs.egu.eu/divisions/gd...

#egugeodynamics

Is it bad that my first thought was: "How did the rainbow colour palette get published in nature in 2026?"

Nicht Klimaschutz ist teuer, Klimaschäden sind teuer.

In den USA wird mit Verweis auf angebliche Kosten gerade die Grundlage vieler Klimaschutzmaßnahmen aufgehoben.

Bemerkenswert ist, wie Klimawissenschaftler @alevermann.bsky.social auf dieses Kostenargument antwortet.

An iceberg that glows golden from the light of the setting sun behind. There's also some long exposure pinkish waves behind. The iceberg is scalloped which messes with the eyes a bit (look convex but are actually concave).

Dragon scales perhaps? A golden iceberg from the beach at Jökulsárlón in south-east #Iceland 6 years ago.

🧪🧵 During my recent voyage to the #Antarctic Peninsula on #BarkEuropa we experienced rain rather than snow on 5 consecutive days, which I'm fairly sure must be unusual in this region. The temperature anomaly map for January from @copernicusecmwf.bsky.social provides an explanation.

UPDATES
There are no more words to describe tne insanity going on : dozens of thousands of records are being smashed allover Asia.

RUSSIA is with +24C at over 1000m asl and rising.
In many areas is way warmer than a July day and next days will be MUCH hotter.

How the harsh, icy world of Snowball Earth shaped life today | Aeon Essays Our planet was once a harsh, alien, icy world. Yet this deep freeze may have shaped you, me and all life on Earth

In this Essay, geologist Graham Shields elucidates how Snowball Earth began, and how it heralded a biological revolution that redrew the tree of life

View along ice-choked channel between Spert Island (left) and Trinity Island (right), with sheer cliffs of dark, volcanic rocks on either side.

Two small boats with members of voyage crew on board weaving between growlers and brash ice in the narrow channel between Spert Island and Trinity Island. The dark ciff in the background is on Trinity Island.

A cluster of icebergs in the mouth of the channel between Spert and Trinity islands contasts strongly with a dark sky.

View looking back to Bark Europa (centre right of image) from one of the zodiac boats, with mountains on the mainland of Graham Land, Antarctic Peninsula in the distance.

Day 7 of my voyage to the #Antarctic Peninsula on the #tallship #BarkEuropa: an exploration of a narrow channel between Spert and Trinity islands in small boats, weaving between numerous icebergs and growlers.
#BusmansHoliday

The above 2026 projection (new record) is +0.15°C warmer than 2023.

In the Mercator Ocean estimate, Ocean Heat Content increased by about 100 ZJ (1*10^23 joules) the past two years.

Using basic physics and back of the envelope, this amount of heat can increase the top 400 m of ocean by 0.17°C!

In recognition of International Day of Women and Girls in Science (Feb 11), it's a great time to re-share this paper from 2010 - lots of progress and lots more room to grow. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Glacier surging and surge-related hazards in a changing climate - Nature Reviews Earth & Environment Glacier surges are rapid ice flow acceleration and mass transport events, which can threaten nearby communities, infrastructure and habitats. This Review discusses the global distribution, behaviour a...

***Our review paper on glacier surging is out!***

Lovell H, Benn DI, Jiskoot H and 12 others (2026) “Glacier surging and surge-related hazards in a changing climate.”
Nature Reviews Earth & Environment 7(2). doi.org/10.1038/s430...

@hazlovell.bsky.social #cryosphere #glaciology #science #glaciers

“Academia is a lot like an open-world RPG: a role playing game in which you wander a world that initially seems full of endless possibility, but ultimately devolves into repeating the same actions over and over again for diminishing returns slowly consuming your days, evenings, and weekends.”

Grazalema, Spain, received over 2,000 mm (78 inches) of rain in just the last 20 days.

Over a year’s worth of rain — and it’s only early February. This is hydrologically absurd.

Blue ice in foreground and towering pinnacles under a blue sky on the background

Leaving Antarctica with computers full of data, notebooks full of notes + numbers and just about as much kit as we brought (+ some waste for correct disposal). Travelling out via the gobsmacking #WhiteDesert.
#Antarctica, you've been wonderful, who knows when we'll meet again... #iQ2300

Biodiversity implications of land-intensive carbon dioxide removal - Nature Climate Change Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) plays an important role in decarbonization pathways to meet climate goals, but some methods are land-intensive. Multimodel analysis reveals conflicts between biodiversity ...

In a new study, published today in Nature Climate Change, we explore how carbon dioxide removal (CDR) – approaches that take CO2 out of the atmosphere – may affect #biodiversity. 🦎🐌 doi.org/10.1038/s415...

🔬Verifying GPR data with ice cores and refractometers

📹Here is the final instalment of our 5 part series from @alibanwell.bsky.social @cires.colorado.edu in #Antarctica

👏Thank you Ali Banwell, Ryan Cassotto, Michela Savignano and Allie Berry for sharing this incredible work with CPOM!

People get prickly about these requests bc they see them as individual critiques but they're really efforts to set norms and build culture around sharing information, which feels very meaningful and worthwhile to me in this moment.