Global impacts of climate extremes in the polar regions: is Antarctica reaching a tipping point?

Professor Kate Hendry is a chemical oceanographer at the British Antarctic Survey, and an honorary professor at the Universities of Bristol and East Anglia. Her research interests surround the impact on marine nutrient cycling of climate change in the polar regions.

Kate has published over 90 papers in international journals, and has won almost £5M in grant funding as Principal Investigator, and collaborated on several other national and international projects. She won the Geological Society of London Bigsby Medal in 2025 for services to geosciences, the EAG Houtermans medal in 2016, and a Challenge Society fellowship in 2012.

Kate is Chair of Antarctic Science Ltd, which runs the journal Antarctic Science, and the Antarctic Science International Bursary Scheme. She is vice chair of the UK Arctic and Antarctic Partnership, and is the geosciences representative in the UK National Committee for Antarctic Research (UKNCAR). She is honorary secretary of the Challenger Society for Marine Science, and established their Equity, Diversity, Inclusivity and Accessibility working group.

Jane is Director of the British Antarctic Survey. She is involved with international polar organisations, such as the Antarctic Treaty and European Polar Board, and on several advisory boards of national polar programmes. 

Jane Francis is a geologist by training, with research interests in past climates, especially the change from greenhouse to icehouse climates in the polar regions over the past 100 million years. She has undertaken over 15 scientific expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctica in search of fossil forests and information about climates of the past.

Jane was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (DCMG) in recognition of services to UK polar science and diplomacy. She was awarded the UK Polar Medal, the Royal Geographical Society’s Patron’s Medal, the 2022 Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation Award for Planetary Health and is a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Professor Michael Meredith is an ocean/climate scientist at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), and Professorial Fellow in Oceanography at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge. He created and led the Polar Oceans team at BAS, which has research foci on determining the role of the polar oceans on global climate, the ice sheets, and the interdisciplinary ocean system. He is a Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union, and a NERC Individual Merit Promotion (Band 2) scientist. He was the inaugural chair of the Southern Ocean Observing System, and served as Coordinating Lead Author for the IPCC Special Report on Oceans and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate. In 2018, Michael was awarded the Tinker-Muse Prize for Science and Policy in Antarctica, and the Challenger Medal for contributions for Marine Science. In 2021, Michael was elected to serve as President of the Challenger Society for Marine Science, the UK's pre-eminent learned body for research of the ocean.

Professor Geraint Tarling is a biological oceanographer focusing on the polar regions. Over his 25 year career, he has worked at the National Oceanography Centre, the Scottish Association for Marine Science and the British Antarctic Survey, where he now leads the Ecosystems team. His research has tackled a number of issues considering how influences of marine organisms at small scales have major impacts on large-scale processes. He has contributed particularly to our understanding of how marine ecosystems transport and sequester carbon, with wider implications to the regulation of global climate. Most recently, he is the Principal Scientist for BIOPOLE, a £9M multi-institute UK programme determining how marine ecosystem in both polar regions help regulate the balance of carbon and nutrients in the world's oceans and their influence on global fish stocks and carbon storage.

Dominic Hodgson is a Quaternary Scientist at the British Antarctic Survey and Visiting Professor of Geography at Durham University specialising in high latitude climate and environmental change. He publishes on Antarctic glacial history, late glacial and Holocene climate change, technologies for subglacial sediment access and sampling, and collaborates on polar biogeography and endemism.

Peter Davis is a physical oceanographer at the British Antarctic Survey who specialises in observing the ocean beneath Arctic and Antarctic ice shelves. His research focuses primarily on high-latitude ice-ocean interactions and their impact on ice shelf basal melting. He has a particular specialism in using access holes, made through many hundreds of metres of ice, to understand the turbulent ocean processes that transport heat towards the ice base and set the rate at which ice shelves are melted from below. In recognition of his work to understand how, and how fast, the ocean is melting the underside of Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica, Peter was honoured by TIME magazine as one of the world's 100 most influential people in 2023.