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In its inaugural year in 2021, the Cambridge Festival managed to reach every continent on Earth - except Antarctica. So, for 2022, we’ve brought Antarctica to Cambridge. While you're here, learn about some of the world-leading research happening here in Cambridge.

̽��ֱ��ice shelves surrounding the Antarctic coastline retreated at speeds of up to 50 metres per day at the end of the last Ice Age, far more rapid than the satellite-derived retreat rates observed today, new research has found.

An international team of scientists has found part of the world’s largest ice shelf is melting 10 times faster than the overall ice shelf average due to solar heating of the surrounding ocean surface.

A Cambridge researcher will lead one of eight projects in a new joint UK-US research programme that is one of the most detailed and extensive examinations of a massive Antarctic glacier ever undertaken. 

Thousands of marks on the Antarctic seafloor, caused by icebergs which broke free from glaciers more than ten thousand years ago, show how part of the Antarctic Ice Sheet retreated rapidly at the end of the last ice age as it balanced precariously on sloping ground and became unstable. Today, as the global climate continues to warm, rapid and sustained retreat may be close to happening again and could trigger runaway ice retreat into the interior of the continent, which in turn would cause sea levels to rise even faster than currently projected. 

An international team of researchers has found that the Antarctic Ice Sheet plays a major role in regional and global climate variability – a discovery that may also help explain why sea ice in the Southern Hemisphere has been increasing despite the warming of the rest of the Earth.

̽��ֱ��family of the chief scientific officer from Ernest Shackleton’s famous Endurance expedition are to mark its centenary by completing part of his intended route to the South Pole and by digitising unpublished journals kept by their ancestor, James Wordie.

Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance diaries and boots – as well as the largest remaining piece of the doomed vessel – have gone on display in Cambridge, almost 100 years since the ship was crushed and sunk by pack ice in Antarctica’s Weddell Sea.

�ճ����Cambridge Animal Alphabet series celebrates Cambridge's connections with animals through literature, art, science and society. Here, A is for Albatross – in sketches retrieved from Antarctica, research into migratory patterns, and Coleridge’s famous ballad.

A letter written by the dying Captain Scott - one of only two remaining in private hands - can be revealed in full for the first time after being acquired by the Scott Polar Research Institute at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.