ERC Spotlight: Reconstructing Antarctic sea-ice evolution with Professor Erin McClymont

Researchers led by Professor Erin McClymont, from our Department of Geography, are examining the beautiful Antarctic seabird, the snow petrel (Pagodroma nivea). Their goal is to reconstruct changes in sea ice and its ecosystems over tens of thousands of years.

Past, present and future

The five-year study is made up of a large team of PhD students, post-doctoral researchers, and staff at Durham’s Department of Geography, Department of Biosciences and at the British Antarctic Survey.

The team is examining the behaviour and diet of the snow petrels today, to help understand the signals recorded in subfossil stomach-oil deposits preserved at their nesting sites.

They are doing this work with an eye on understanding how these unique systems will behave in the future.

First research using GPS tracking

The project has already achieved a groundbreaking milestone by using GPS tracking to monitor the movements of breeding snow petrels in Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica.

During the austral summer of December 2021 to February 2022, specially designed GPS devices recorded the birds' locations every 30 minutes during their foraging trips.

Despite harsh weather conditions, including strong winds and temperatures dropping to the minus thirties, the team successfully retrieved the data from base stations.

Environmental extremes

This study data revealed that snow petrels, weighing less than 400 grams, travelled hundreds of kilometres from their colony to find food for their chicks, even amidst record-breaking sea-ice loss and severe weather.

These findings provide valuable insights into how an Antarctic top predator copes with environmental extremes.

On longer timescales, the team has examined how the snow petrels responded to the extreme climate of the last ice age, approximately 25,000 years ago, and the return to warmer conditions approximately 11,000 years ago.

Despite a thicker and more extensive Antarctic ice sheet, and even greater sea ice than today, the team has identified snow petrels nesting onshore.

By tracing chemical fossils preserved in the stomach oils, the team has identified that the snow petrel diet varied during the ice age.

Periods of time which were rich in fish suggest that the birds were able to feed in gaps in the sea ice, close to shore, so that even in a harsher environment than today they were able to survive in selected locations.

In the coming months, the ongoing research is looking to determine when the snow petrels returned to sites which were too extreme during the ice ages.

Using fossil evidence of their diet the team is also working to understand how sea ice has changed over the last approximately 50,000 years.

Work is continuing on monitoring snow petrel colonies today, to better understand their interactions with sea ice and other factors. This research project is funded by the ERC and the Leverhulme Trust.

Top image caption: Professor Erin McClymont (left) examines a new snow petrel deposit, recovered by PhD student Thale Damm-Johnsen (right) from Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica, for the ANTSIE project.

Find out more

• Learn more about ANTSIE.
• Discover more about Professor Erin McClymont and her work.
• Read the related research papers:
  • The foraging distribution and habitat use of chick-rearing snow petrels from two colonies in Dronning Maud Land
  • A circumpolar review of the breeding distribution and habitat use of the snow petrel (Pagodroma nivea), the world’s most southerly breeding vertebrate
  • Seasonal resource tracking and use of sea-ice foraging habitats by albatrosses and large petrels. Progress in Oceanography
  • Biomarker proxies for reconstructing Quaternary climate and environmental change
  • Summer sea-ice variability on the Antarctic margin during the last glacial period reconstructed from snow petrel (Pagodroma nivea) stomach-oil deposits
  • Snow petrel stomach-oil deposits as a new biological archive of Antarctic sea ice
  • What the stomach content of an Antarctic bird can tell us about past climate
• Read a related Blog by Durham PhD student Eleanor Maedhbh Honan who is involved in the project.
• Our Department of Geography is ranked 11th in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2025. 
• Visit our Geography webpages for more information on our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.