Small particles (known as aerosol) in the atmosphere play several critical roles. They affect the transmission of sunlight to the underlying surface; they affect the formation of clouds, and they host and enhance important chemical reactions. When they are deposited on ice they leave a record of past conditions that can be accessed by drilling ice cores. The most significant aerosol component over marine areas is sea salt aerosol. Over most of the world's oceans this is created by bubble bursting in sea spray. However there is strong evidence that another source of sea salt aerosol is important in the polar regions, and that this ultimately derives from the surface of sea ice. The existence of this source forms the basis for a proposed method using ice core data for determining changes in sea ice extent over long time periods. Additionally sea salt aerosol, along with salty sea ice surfaces, is the host for the production of halogen compounds which seem to play a key role in the oxidation chemistry of the polar regions. It is therefore important to understand the sources of polar sea salt aerosol and therefore to be able to predict how they may vary with, and feedback to, climate. It was recently proposed that the main source of this polar sea salt aerosol was the sublimation of salty blowing snow. The idea is that snow on sea ice has a significant salinity. When this salty snow is mobilised into blowing snow, sublimation from the (top of) the blowing snow layer will allow the formation of sea salt aerosol above the blowing snow layer, that can remain airborne after the blowing snow has ceased. First calculations suggested that this would provide a strong source of aerosol (greater than that from open ocean processes over an equivalent area). It was proposed that this would have a strong influence on polar halogen chemistry and a noticeable influence on halogens at lower latitudes. However, this was based on estimates of the relevant parameters as there were no data about aerosol production from this source, and almost no data about blowing snow over sea ice in general. Participation in a rare sea ice cruise onboard the German ice breaker Polarstern operated by Alfred-Wegener-Institut (AWI) provided the opportunity to access the sea ice covered Weddell Sea during Austral winter 2013. Snow on sea ice was sampled at various locations, and the snow salinity was subsequently measured in the ship's laboratory.

Sea ice index comprising data extracted from historical records of ship observed ice positions during Weddell Sea voyages between 1820-1843. Extracted data comprise information on the expedition ship and lead, type of document, the date on which the observation was made, the ship's latitude and longitude at the time of the observation, comments on sea ice and sea ice present (1 if deemed present, 0 if not). Publication assisted by Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship EM-2022-042 to Professor Grant R. Bigg: "Extending the Southern Ocean marine ice record to the eighteenth century".

These are light level and activity data collected from BAS geolocators that were deployed on 4 Leopard Seals hauled out on Bird Island, South Georgia. Tags were deployed between May 2003 and June 2013. One seal Y5282(B4942) was tracked during two non-consecutive years using two different identification flipper tags. There are three data types for each seal a) the unprocessed light sensor data b) the unprocessed activity (wet/dry) data and c) The estimated positions estimated using the BAStag and SGAT packages in R. All files are in the CSV format and each folder has a readme.txt file describing the data structure of the files within. The data are reported in detail in Staniland et al. 2018 'Long Term Movements and Activity Patterns of an Antarctic Marine Apex Predator: The Leopard Seal' PLOSone

This dataset contains model input and output data on emperor penguin population dynamics for a Bayesian analysis carried out on multivariate classification results. Model input data comprises multivariate classification analysis results derived from very-high resolution (VHR) satellite imagery pertaining to 16 emperor penguin colonies, spanning the Bellingshausen Sea to the Weddell Sea between 2009 to 2023. Model output data comprises population estimates for each year for each colony, global trends per year, global change for the dataset overall, global abundance pertaining to individual colonies, as well as statistical parameter estimates provided by the model. Data collection was carried out by personnel at BAS. Funding from WWF UK (GB095701), project NE/Y00115X/1 "Understanding emperor penguin populations in the Weddell Sea and Antarctic Peninsula" and previous WWF funding over the 15 year period.