(Maev Kennedy/Guardian, 3 February 2010) --  Readers can, from today, pore over the pages of faded pencil handwriting that make up one of the most famous diaries in the world – Captain Robert Scott's journal of the final months, days and hours of his doomed 1911-1912 expedition to the South Pole.

The British Library has launched an online facsimile of the complete last diary alongside extensive extracts from the two earlier volumes. The move means people can follow the setbacks that befell his group – the deterioration of the weather, illness and injury and food and fuel supplies running out – until they died in their tent on 29 March 1912, only 11 miles from a supply depot. Long before writing his last sentences – "It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more – R. Scott – For God's sake look after our people" – the explorer knew they were finished. They had already experienced the shock of reaching the Pole only to find that the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen had beaten them to it. Scott described that as "a horrible day" and admitted for the first time that he and his companions might not survive the journey back. ...

Katrina Dean, the curator of the history of science at the library, said: "Scott's Antarctic diaries have played an important role in shaping images of polar exploration, so it's great that people all over the world can explore the original diaries online." Two of the original diaries are on view in the library's treasures gallery at King's Cross, London.

(CBC News, 5 February 2101) -- This Scotch has been on the rocks for a century. Five crates of Scotch whisky and two of brandy have been recovered by a team restoring an Antarctic hut used more than 100 years ago by famed polar explorer Ernest Shackleton. Ice cracked some of the bottles that had been left there in 1909, but the restorers said Friday they are confident the five crates contain intact bottles "given liquid can be heard when the crates are moved."

New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust team leader Al Fastier said the team thought there were two crates and were amazed to find five. Current distillery owner, drinks group Whyte & Mackay, launched the bid to recover the Scotch whisky for samples to test and decide whether to relaunch the defunct spirit made by distiller McKinlay and Co. Fastier said restoration workers found the crates under the hut's floorboards in 2006, but they were too deeply embedded in ice to be dislodged. The New Zealanders agreed to drill the ice to try to retrieve some bottles, although the rest must stay under conservation guidelines agreed to by twelve Antarctic Treaty nations.

"The unexpected find of the brandy crates, one labelled Chas. Mackinlay & Co and the other labelled The Hunter Valley Distillery Limited Allandale (Australia), are a real bonus," said Fastier. ...  Richard Paterson, master blender at Whyte and Mackay, whose company supplied the Mackinlay's whisky for Shackleton, described the find as "a gift from the heavens for whisky lovers. "If the contents can be confirmed, safely extracted and analyzed, the original blend may be able to be replicated. Given the original recipe no longer exists, this may open a door into history," he said in a statement.

(CBC News, 30 January 2010) -- A pencil sketch that was created last fall as a joke between an autistic child from Newfoundland and his mother over her kicking his toy penguin has turned into a web phenomenon, resulting in hundreds of dollars in novelty sales involving the drawing.

Seven-year-old Colby Chipman made the drawing back in October after he saw his mother Michelle kick the toy out of her way as she walked through their home in Paradise, just outside of St. John's. "He said, 'Mommy, there's no kicking penguins!' she told CBC News. Chipman said her son then raced into his room and emerged a few minutes later with a sheet of yellow paper that had a stick drawing of a person in a kicking motion standing near a penguin. There was a circle around the sketch and a diagonal line through it — the global sign for something that isn't permitted.

"He came back, taped it to the wall and said 'See Mommy, there's no kicking penguins,'" Chipman said. ... Chipman said the drawing went viral after it appeared on reddit.com, a social news website on which users can post links to content on the internet and make comments. "A British researcher in Antarctica thought it was cool, printed it off and then started taking pictures of it near penguins and the ocean, and it's just gone global from there," she said.

(ExplorersWeb.com, 21 January 2010) -- Arriving at the Ross Ice Shelf today, January 21, nearly a century after Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole in 1911, American Ryan Waters, 36, and Norwegian Cecilie Skog, 35, have achieved the first unassisted crossing of Antarctica. Previous crossings have used wind power to ski-sail across the earth’s southernmost continent.

By using only their own human power, the pair have written a new chapter in Antarctic history. Cecilie Skog, the only woman to summit Everest, K2 and skied to both poles (unassisted and unsupported), thus realized an old dream of her late husband Rolf Bae, whom she lost on K2 last year. Veteran mountaineer Ryan Waters in turn has accomplished a spectacular polar achievement. "Hats off," comment Cecilie's fellow Norwegians, "he really deserved the mountainous overdose the Axel Heiberg area is."

Said Tom Sjøgren at Explorersweb.com: "The first unassisted and unsupported expedition to cross Antarctica. Unassisted and unsupported is the highest form of self-reliance. A "raw" crossing like this has only been done once before across the Arctic Ocean by Rune Gjeldnes and Torry Larsen, and never on Antarctica." Read more in a previous story posted earlier.

(Kris Molle/Polar Conservation Organisation News, 20 January 2010) -- From various articles: Weather data, gathered for more than a century from the southern hemisphere's oldest, coldest weather station, have revealed a warming trend since the 1950s. The base at the Islas Orcadas was founded by Scots in 1903, and has been manned by Argentines ever since, all of whom collected daily weather data. NOAA climate researcher Susan Solomon and her colleagues, in the  Jan. 2010 issue of the Journal of Climate, said that the Orcadas weather data were the culmination of years of searching for old records that contained daily weather information from the Antarctic.

"It turns out to be a fascinating record," Solomon told Discovery News. "What it shows is that there have been changes in the extremes and changes in the actual cycles." She also stated that, although there has been a warming trend since the 1950s, it is probably not primarily caused by global warming. "A big chunk of that is how the way ozone changed the circulation patterns." she said. Since the 1970s, a gigantic ozone hole has been forming over Antarctica every southern spring, which has cooled the stratosphere over Antarctica. "The region outside of the vortex, like Orcadas, is much warmer," Solomon said. "So Orcadas is in a special situation where it's getting much less of the cold waves."

"There was a little bit of that effect before the ozone," she added, which can be attributed to global warming. Climatologist Gareth Marshall of the British Antarctic Survey said, whatever the cause "Orcadas has probably warmed more than any other area in the last 50 years." And that alone makes it worth a closer look.

(Pauline Askin/Reuters India Life!, 13 January 2010) -- CAPE DENISON, Antarctica - An Antarctic expedition has found what they believe to be camera parts abandoned by a renowned Australian photographer during a historic trip to the frozen continent nearly a century ago. James "Frank" Hurley, who died in 1962, was the official photographer of the 1911-14 Australasian Antarctic Expedition (AAE) led by the country's most famous polar explorer Sir Douglas Mawson. He was also the official photographer of the Australian armed forces during both World Wars.

Members of the current expedition, which is dedicated to restoring Mawson's original wooden huts at Cape Denison, said they had retrieved a plate-changing box from a Newman and Guardia camera dating back to between the late 19th to early 20th centuries, inside Hurley's dark room.

"We're not 100 percent sure if it's a component of Hurley's camera's yet, as we are waiting on verification, however it's definitely a component of a very old camera used here in Antarctica which in itself makes it an interesting find," expedition member and archaeologist Jody Steele told Reuters. Several Newman and Guardia cameras were part of the equipment used by the AAE. Details of the recent find have been sent back to Australia for more investigation.

"This is a significant discovery because it may be one of the few camera parts that we can identify with an individual member of the AAE, Frank Hurley," expedition member Peter Morse said. "Other artefacts are more general by nature where as this is specific with a member of the expedition". The find has been returned to its dark room, where the cold environment has helped to preserve it so far.

(Marlene Cimons/National Science Foundation via RedOrbit, 11 January 2010) -- Forty years ago, a pioneering research team from Ohio State made history as the first U.S. women in Antarctica In the spring of 1969, Terry Tickhill Terrell was 19 and an undergraduate chemistry major at Ohio State University, bored with her lab work and restless. She had never traveled more than 250 miles from the Barnesville, Ohio, farm where she grew up.

One day, after reading an article in the school newspaper about a graduate student who had just returned from Antarctica, Terrell decided that that was where she wanted to go. "I couldn't understand why all this awful lab work was important," Terrell said. "So I walked into the Polar Studies office and said: 'I want a job in Antarctica.' The room fell dead silent. The secretary took pity on me and said: 'There's a group of women going this year. Dr. Lois Jones is in her office right now, and I'll call her."' The secretary was referring to geochemist Lois Jones, the leader of the four-woman Ohio State team scheduled to leave in October for four months in Antarctica. Terrell wanted to be a part of it. "Dr. Jones said, 'We have everyone we need, but tell me about yourself,"' Terrell recalled. "I said, 'I'm a chemistry major. I grew up on a farm. I am a hard worker.' She asked if I'd done any camping. I said, 'I'm an outdoor person, and took outdoor cookery at 4H.' The next day she called me up and said: 'One of the ladies is unable to go. I need a cook and field assistant."'

In addition to Terrell and Jones — who passed away in 2000 — the team also included Kay Lindsay and geologist Eileen McSaveney. McSaveney, the other surviving member of the group, had graduated from the University of Buffalo and came to Ohio State for graduate work in landscape changes and glacial geology. ...

For more about the 40th anniversary of women conducting research in Antarctica, see: Forty Years of Women Researchers in Antarctica.

(Martin van Beynen/The Press, 11 January 2010) -- A visit by Korea's new $108 million icebreaker Araon to Lyttelton is part of extending the country's Antarctic programme, which is also considering Christchurch as its gateway base. The city already hosts Italy and the United States and is now pitching itself as the ideal choice for Korea. Antarctica New Zealand chief executive Lou Sanson said Korea's ice effort had a $200m yearly budget and would represent a significant addition to the Antarctica business in Christchurch. Korea was looking at two or three other mainland centres, but every effort was being made to ensure Korea selected Christchurch, he said.

The Araon, which arrived on Friday, is heading into Antarctic waters late this month for sea trials and to scope options for its new station, which include sites at Cape Burkes, Enderby Land and Terra Nova Bay. Korea already has a base on King George Island in the Antarctic Peninsula, and also has research facilities at Dasan Station, in Ny-Alesund, Svalbard Islands in the Arctic.

A party that included Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker, representatives of the local Korean community and the Korean Polar Research Institute, welcomed the Araon to Lyttelton on Saturday. Parker said the city was keen to help aid Antarctica New Zealand build and foster strong relationships with polar explorers such as Korea. "The capabilities of this icebreaker mean that Korea is now a significant partner in Antarctic science." ... The name Araon is a mixture of Korean words for sea (ara) and all (on).