It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Scientists predict that the next three to five decades provide a critical window to anticipate and plan for Antarctic ice loss and its contribution to sea level rise.
Research published in Nature, led by Monash University researcher Dr Felicity McCormack from Securing Antarctica’s Environmental Future (SAEF), looks at the predictability of Antarctic ice loss and what this means for sea level rise projections.
Based on reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a global sea level rise exceeding two metres by 2100 cannot be ruled out under high-emission scenarios due to the large-scale collapse of the Antarctic Ice Sheet.
This level of sea level rise would expose one quarter of Australian residential properties to inundation, render much sovereign territory across the Pacific uninhabitable, and displace hundreds of millions of people globally, representing one of the most significant humanitarian and economic challenges in history.
However, the trajectory of sea level rise between now and 2100 remains deeply uncertain, largely due to the difficulty of projecting Antarctic ice loss. Under a worst-case scenario, the IPCC predicted that the rate of sea level rise from Antarctic ice loss alone could nearly double within the next 30 years. But until now, there has been no robust estimate of Antarctica’s contribution to sea level rise over the next few decades, the timescale most critical for coastal planning and policy decisions.
The research aims to answer the question of how much ice Antarctica will lose over the next 30-50 years, and whether that loss can be predicted reliably enough to give governments and nation states sufficient lead time to respond effectively. The study assessed predictability in ice sheet model projections of sea level rise within this near-term window.
Dr McCormack explains how Antarctic ice loss exhibits a strong, steady predictability until the mid-century, allowing for reliable estimations regarding sea level rise.
“If ice sheet models accurately reproduce the rates of ice loss we observe today, we can have confidence in using those same models to reliably predict Antarctica’s contribution to sea level rise over the next 30 to 50 years. Accurately predicting how much and how fast global sea levels will rise offers vital information for future coastal planning and government policy,” said Dr McCormack.
However, this predictability breaks down by the end of the 21st century when physical processes that can rapidly accelerate ice loss become increasingly likely. For example, ice resting on bedrock below sea level can enter a rapid retreat, which once triggered, is difficult to reverse and could drive ice loss far beyond what near-term climate change projections would suggest.
“The research findings provide a roadmap for future climate planning. By improving how ice sheet models represent critical physical processes that lead to rapid ice sheet retreat, we can narrow the deep uncertainty that hampers reliability of long-term sea level rise projections,” Dr McCormack said.
The researchers have identified that a window of opportunity for climate action does exist. The next three decades represent a period of well-constrained sea level rise trajectories and are critical to strategic adaptation planning.
Professor Steven Chown, Director of SAEF says that the time to act is now, within the window of opportunity, and we must invest in better observational capabilities.
“The predictability identified in this research does not reduce long-term risk, instead it provides a defined period in which to act with greater confidence. Improvements in observational systems and ice sheet model developments will directly translate into more reliable sea level projections for short-term planning horizons,” Professor Chown said.
In relation to engaging Indo-Pacific partners, Professor Chown explained that Australia is well-positioned to lead regional efforts to translate these findings into practical adaptation frameworks.
“Pacific Island governments require reliable near-term projections to make decisions about infrastructure, community relocation, and long-term land use. Engagement on sea level science and adaptation planning represents a foreign policy opportunity and a regional responsibility,” Professor Chown said.
Dr McCormack said establishing a clear pathway for integrating ice sheet model projections into sea level rise policy frameworks is critical.
“When models replicate present-day observations of Antarctic ice mass loss, their projected ice mass loss rates over the coming several decades provide a reliable foundation for planning and adaptation, while longer-term sea level rise uncertainties highlight the need for ongoing development,” Dr McCormack said.
Framing Antarctic projections around these two time horizons – short-term predictable ice loss and long-term feedback-dominated change – may provide a clearer foundation for a robust policy response.
Monday, June 08, 2026
The world's record heatwaves - Statista
The last three years have been the hottest ever on record and this year not expected to be any different. / bne IntelliNewsFacebook
According to NASA, there is “unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate”, Statista reports. Data from Copernicus, the European Earth Observation program for the European Space Agency, shows that July 22, 2024, was the world’s hottest daily global average temperature since the institution’s records began in 1940 (hitting a global average of 17.16 °C/62.76 °F).
At a regional scale too, absolute temperature records are being broken around the globe. Just in the years 2022-2025, 41 countries broke or tied their all-time national heat records, some of them more than once. Japan saw its hottest day on record last August, reaching 41.8°C/107.2°F in Isesaki, in the Gunma Prefecture. Eight other countries tied or beat their heat records last year, including Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Paraguay. Some records were also set in Southeast Asia in 2024, when an exceptional heatwave hit the region. Cambodia set a new record at 42.8 °C/109.0 °F, while Laos hit a new all-time high of 43.7 °C/110.7 °F.
Meanwhile, Australia and Uruguay matched their national records in 2022, with 50.7 °C/123.3 °F in Onslow and 44.0°C/111.2 °F in Florida, respectively, as the United Kingdom saw the mercury break an all-time high in July 2022 as it passed the 40°C barrier.
Previously, during the summer of 2021 - one of the hottest on Earth -, Canada, Spain and Italy recorded peak temperatures. The Italian record, 48.8 °C/119.8 °F at Syracuse, was reported to be the highest temperature ever measured in Europe, which was certified by the WMO in 2024.
In Antarctica, a new record was hit in 2020 at the Esperanza base during the austral summer when temperatures rose to over 18 °C/64.9 °F. One year earlier, the French national record of 46 °C/114.8 °F was measured at Vérargues (Hérault), while the 2019 heatwave also saw other records broken in Europe, such as in Belgium and Germany.
According to the WMO, the world record is still officially attributed to Furnace Creek, in California’s Death Valley National Park, with 56.7 °C/134 °F reached in 1913.
Mean monthly temperature records reached highs in the past three years in May of 2024, when around 15 percent of the Earth's surface set new mean temperature records for that month, and July of 2024, when this applied to almost 14 percent of the globe. The biggest month for cold records in the same time frame was January 2024. However, a much smaller 0.9 percent of Earth's surface set new records for the lowest mean monthly temperatures ever recorded.
Looking back further, new heat records used to be far less common than new cold records in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, with the balance flipping for almost all months in the past decades. In April, the most recent month on record, new cold record were much more common, before new heat records became the norm by a large margin from the 2000s onwards.
Researchers advocate for community-driven, on-demand weather observations, helping Arctic communities be better prepared for the challenges of climate change.
Credit: Prof. Jun Inoue from National Institute of Polar Research, Japan
Arctic communities are increasingly exposed to dangerous weather events due to climate change and rely on accurate weather forecasts. However, conditions in the lower atmosphere remain poorly observed in the Arctic because monitoring systems are expensive and difficult to deploy. Now, researchers propose a new framework for on-demand atmospheric observations based on lightweight, low-cost profiling systems that can be operated by local communities whenever additional weather data are needed, helping improve forecasting and climate resilience.
As climate change rapidly transforms the polar environment, people in the Arctic are facing a growing number of threats. Many indigenous and local communities living across Alaska, Canada, Russia, and Nordic countries have to regularly make life-or-death decisions based on weather forecasts. Knowing how conditions may change in the next few hours directly influences their travel, hunting, and fishing plans; accurate local weather information is tightly tied to their safety and livelihoods.
Unfortunately, the forecasting tools currently available to these communities are poorly suited to the task. The world’s most advanced weather prediction systems are better at forecasting conditions at large, regional scales rather than at local scales in the short term, which is where people actually make decisions. Moreover, across much of the Arctic, the lower atmosphere remains poorly observed. Satellites have difficulty measuring this layer accurately in polar regions, while weather balloons and drone-based observation systems are expensive, technically demanding to launch, and difficult to operate in remote communities. As a result, the places that most urgently need better local forecasts are often the ones with the weakest observational coverage.
To address this challenge, Professor Jun Inoue from the Arctic Environment Research Center, National Institute of Polar Research, Japan, and Dr. Hajo Eicken from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Germany, have proposed a new framework for on-demand atmospheric observations. Their latest paper, published in npj Climate Action on May 09, 2026, outlines how lightweight, low-cost atmospheric profiling systems could enable local communities, researchers, and institutions to perform weather observations whenever and wherever they are needed, helping improve short-term forecasting and climate resilience in rapidly changing regions.
The study builds on past research showing that even a small number of additional atmospheric observations in the Arctic can significantly improve weather forecasts. Previous field campaigns using radiosondes, which are instrument packages attached to weather balloons, demonstrated that observations collected in data-sparse polar regions could improve predictions of Arctic cyclones, cold-air outbreaks, and other extreme events. However, conventional radiosonde systems require trained personnel and incur high operational costs, limiting their long-term use in many remote areas.
Rather than relying solely on such traditional weather observation techniques and infrastructure, the researchers advocate for community-operated systems that are easier to deploy. The proposed approach, enabled by advances in miniaturization and electronics, centers on ultralight balloon-based sensors that can measure key atmospheric variables such as temperature, humidity, pressure, and wind. These measurements could then be transmitted in real time and incorporated into weather prediction systems, including emerging artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted forecasting models.
An important aspect of the proposed framework is that observations could be conducted on demand, meaning that measurements would be launched in response to approaching storms, wildfire smoke events, coastal flooding risks, or other rapidly evolving hazards. This type of flexible observation strategy could help fill critical gaps in existing forecasting systems, particularly in remote or underserved regions. “Because the proposed system is lightweight, flexible, and comparatively low-cost, it could complement existing meteorological networks by enabling observations to be performed by local institutions, researchers, or communities whenever additional atmospheric data are needed,” explains Prof. Inoue.
Worth noting, the concept of on-demand atmospheric profiling has broader implications that extend beyond the Arctic. Similar observational gaps exist in many mountainous regions, island communities, coastal areas, and rural locations around the world. By combining on-demand observations with AI-assisted forecasting, communities could gain access to more localized and actionable weather information. By lowering the operational and technical barriers for atmospheric observations, the proposed approach could help create more accessible, distributed, and responsive observation networks that strengthen disaster preparedness, climate adaptation, and societal resilience.
“The upcoming Fifth International Polar Year (IPY-5), a scientific campaign planned for 2032–2033, could provide an important framework for advancing these systems in polar regions. If successful, this solution could contribute to a broader shift toward community-centered weather observations amidst a rapidly changing Arctic climate,” concludes Prof. Inoue.
About Professor Jun Inoue from National Institute of Polar Research, Japan
Dr. Jun Inoue is a Professor and Director at the Arctic Environment Research Center, National Institute of Polar Research, Japan. He obtained his master’s and PhD degrees from Hokkaido University, Japan, in 1999 and 2001, respectively. His research interests lie in the fields of atmospheric and hydrosphere science, particularly in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. He has published over 120 papers on these topics and has received awards from the Japan Meteorological Society on three occasions.
About National Institute of Polar Research, Japan
The National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR) engages in comprehensive research via observation stations in Arctic and Antarctica as a member of the Research Organization of Information and Systems (ROIS). It provides researchers throughout Japan and other countries with infrastructure and support for polar observations and works actively to promote polar science. By working under the same frameworks as various international academic organizations, NIPR is the core Japanese representative institution operating in both poles, conducting cutting-edge research on polar ecosystems, polar climate science, geology, sustainability in polar regions, and more.
About the Research Organization of Information and Systems (ROIS)
The Research Organization of Information and Systems (ROIS) is a parent organization of four national institutes (National Institute of Polar Research, National Institute of Informatics, the Institute of Statistical Mathematics and National Institute of Genetics) and the Joint Support-Center for Data Science Research. It is ROIS's mission to promote integrated, cutting-edge research that goes beyond the barriers of these institutions, in addition to facilitating their research activities, as members of inter-university research institutes.
Antarctica, 6 January 2024 Photo Credit: Martin Klingenbock / IAEA / Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
For twenty years I have worked strengthening African governance and multilateral institutions. Across each sector – security, economic development, education reform and humanitarian aid – I heard inspiring politicians agree to ambitious international cooperation to tackle regional problems. Yet that solidarity was, more often than not, lost in poor follow-through action. International cooperation on the continent can feel rousing at first and then disappointing when it comes time to take action.
The Struggle to Deliver Lofty Ambitions
Indeed, any review of major multilateral initiatives for the continent reveals that African nations articulate the boldest visions of multilateralism in the world but frequently fail to operationalise them. For over three decades, the continent’s leaders have affirmed ‘African solutions to African problems’. There are good examples of this working successfully. Think no farther than the African Union-backed mediation efforts following Kenya’s 2008 election crisis or the African Vaccine Acquisition Trust which pooled continental vaccine procurement during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Yet for each example of success, there are more instances of shortfall. Peacekeeping via the African Union has been a priority for the continent since before the turn of the century. Extensive diplomatic effort has gone into the African Standby Force (ASF) to deliver this vision. However, international security initiatives continue to rely on foreign financing and ad hoc coalitions.
Even where cooperative frameworks do exist, execution on the ground can be underwhelming. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) demonstrates this. Economic integration through the AfCFTA has been a point of impressive political consensus yet remains limited in actual implementation. Many import tariffs and bureaucratic barriers are still in place despite all African countries – bar Eritrea – signing up to the continent-wide free trade deal nearly a decade ago.
This isn’t limited to economics. In climate change fora, African nations’ positions are surprisingly aligned, especially when you consider how large and diverse this group of countries is. However, once delivery of an international agreement kicks off, cooperation often falls far short of what was promised. Inconsistent cross-border data sharing for drought and flood early-warning systems is a case in point.
We need to do more to make multilateralism work on the ground, moving the rhetoric to a reality. But is there anywhere we can look to for a model of functioning multilateralism? The answer lies in a place you would least expect.
Antarctica: The Model of Effective International Cooperation
The Expanse of the Antarctic Continent with Penguins Nesting for the Austral Summer (author’s photo).
There is one place where national rivals do work together — consistently and pragmatically. It is not a parliament or a palace, but the coldest place on Earth. In December 2025, I joined an expedition to Antarctica to explore the planet’s most durable model of multilateral governance and to consider what its quiet successes suggest for international cooperation in Africa and beyond.
The seventh continent is the most hostile to life on the planet. Temperatures can drop so low that fuel freezes, metal shatters and bodies die in minutes. Surviving in this environment requires incredible teamwork both as individuals and as nations.
‘It’s so harsh here, you have to work together to survive,’ says Bingbing Jiang, a Chinese linguist who has led multinational expeditions to the polar south for seven years. ‘If you don’t, you can die.’
The results of this cooperation are remarkable: an entire continent free of military activity, geopolitical rivals sharing logistical capabilities to cut through the ice and resupply each other, scientific data open to everyone regardless of nationality and extensive environmental protection protocols adhered to by all.
This success is built on structured collaboration. The Antarctic Treaty System, launched in 1959 and expanded in scope since then, governs the continent and its fifty-eight country signatories. It bans armies, suspends colonial-era territorial claims, prohibits oil and mineral extraction and devotes the continent ‘to peace and science’. Decisions are made by consensus, effectively giving veto-power to any operationally involved nation. The system, extraordinarily, has no central enforcement authority and countries comply through routine cooperation, self-restraint and mutual inspections that shed light on each other’s activities. Furthermore, Africa is already part of this international cooperation success story. South Africa was a founding nation of the original treaty and therefore a designer of this functioning model of global governance
The success of the Antarctic system has powerful lessons for multilateral cooperation in Africa and elsewhere. It proves that a large group of diverse nations can work together without ruthless competition or bureaucratic deficit. It challenges the view that international relations must be zero-sum and demonstrates how focusing on operational execution increases the odds of multilateral success.
Lessons for Making Multilateralism Work in Africa
With so many countries on the continent peacefully working together to pursue research, disclosing their discoveries and supporting each other’s survival, it is easy to see Antarctica as a utopia. It is not. The system works because it is dull and collaboration routine. It ensures that countries cooperate at a working – not just political – level. There are four operational lessons for African governance to ensure the continent’s inspiring international ambitions are matched by operational reality on the ground.
1) Deliberate interdependence
Maintaining a presence on the continent is expensive, risky and complicated. Severe winds can shift in an instant; snowstorms go on for weeks and temperatures can drop dramatically in a few minutes. To manage this, countries often support each other’s teams. An American runway is used by foreign planes for emergency supplies to their stations. Chinese and Australians conduct joint search and rescue operations. This designed interdependence reinforces trust and a culture of teamwork.
‘I have a Ukrainian first officer I must rely on every day. We avoid the politics of our countries and focus on getting this vessel safely to Antarctica,’ says Captain Vassily Nedbailov of Russia. Embedding collaboration into daily operations, rather than relying solely on political commitment, is a lesson Africa could apply to its regional initiatives such as cross-border emergency responses where even routine coordination and data sharing is rare.
2) Focus on narrow, technical rules
Antarctic governance concentrates on technocratic matters such as safety or environmental protection procedures. These are dull, detailed and agreed by all. This also leaves less opportunity for vetoes or attention-grabbing grandstanding. The drawn-out, technical process of agreeing rules does not lend itself to politicisation, which can undermine ultimate implementation. This powerful lesson in governance is the primary reason Antarctic collaboration works so well. Its absence in other parts of the world, such as in Africa, is often why implementation of international agreements disappoint. For instance, African health cooperation often relies on broad political commitments, while technical standards for data sharing and emergency response remain nationally controlled, allowing coordination to stall.
3) Mandate transparency from each nation
Built into many of the Antarctic protocols are requirements for countries to share activity data. This information can be accessed by all and provides a basis for trust through disclosure. Crucially, this is mandatory and automatic. In contrast, information sharing in many African governance frameworks is voluntary and unstructured. Mandated data disclosure flattens the playing field, brings transparency to operations and builds a basis for mutual inspections that verify compliance.
4) Verify compliance
Compliance with rules is ensured by a mutual inspection process. These protocols allow for any nation to inspect the activities of another on the continent. With over fifty conducted so far, inspections put all countries at the same level, regardless of size or competition elsewhere in the world. They are often conducted multilaterally. For instance, the US and Russia jointly inspected Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Belgian and Norwegian research stations in 2012. These inspections are apolitical, technically focused and routine, ensuring all countries are held to the same standard. Unlike Antarctica’s routine mutual inspections, Africa’s peer review processes are voluntary and episodic, making scrutiny the exception rather than a normal feature of governance.
Conclusion: A Reason for Optimism
First arrival into Antarctica with icy rain clearing to sunshine (author’s photo).
Africa is the warmest continent with over 1.5 billion people, spanning vast demographic and geographic diversity. Icy Antarctica, by contrast, has no permanent population and the most uniform landscape on the planet. It is hard to imagine two more different places in the world. However, the international governance approach of the coldest continent offers exciting clues as to how Africa can deliver its world-leading ambitions for regional collaboration.
Moreover, Africa has not been absent from Antarctic governance. It helped write the rules. South Africa, as an original member nation of the Antarctic Treaty, has been operationally present on the continent for over six decades. It is well positioned to take lessons to Africa from the effective multilateral model we see at the South Pole.
Having experience on both continents, it is clear that Antarctica’s success in international cooperation hints that it is not the rhetoric of leaders or their solidarity at summits that make cross-national teamwork effective. Multilateralism works when it is boring, technical and reinforced through routine. Antarctica’s model offers great reason to be optimistic about the future of international cooperation across Africa.
This article was originally published by African Arguments; please consider supporting the original publication, and read the original version at the link above.
Thursday, May 28, 2026
Sensitivity of Antarctic ice to climate change sharply increased after Ice Age shift 1 million years ago
Top right panel shows the model simulation of Antarctic ice sheet volume change covering the last 3 million years. Bottom right panel represents the relationship between atmospheric CO₂ concentration and Antarctic ice volume changes. Blue and orange lines show nonlinear fits for 1-0 million years ago and 3-1 million years ago, respectively, with shaded bands indicating the 95% uncertainty range. Maps on the left show representative Antarctic ice elevation changes under high-, transitional-, and low-CO₂ states.
A new study published in the journal Nature Geoscience [1] by researchers at the IBS Center for Climate Physics (ICCP) at Pusan National University in South Korea shows that the Antarctic ice sheet became more sensitive to climate forcing following a major shift in Earth’s ice age cycles about one million years ago, providing new insight into how ice sheets respond to long-term climate change.
Antarctica currently holds the largest ice mass on Earth and plays a key role in global sea level change. About one million years ago, Earth’s climate system underwent a major shift, with ice ages becoming longer and more intense. This transition, known as the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, fundamentally altered the behavior of large ice sheets, yet how they responded to this change remains poorly understood. A key challenge has been the lack of long-term, realistic temperature and precipitation data needed to run ice sheet models under such conditions.
To overcome this limitation, the researchers used a realistic paleoclimate computer simulation [2], recently conducted at the ICCP, that reproduces the global climate history over the last 3 million years. Temperature and rainfall data from this simulation were then used as input for the Penn State University ice-sheet–ice-shelf model. This model simulates changes in ice sheet flow, temperature, and height for the Northern Hemisphere ice sheets and Antarctica. It also captures the dynamics and movement of floating ice shelves, such as in the Ross and Weddell Seas. Running the ice-sheet model on one of South Korea’s fastest computers dedicated to basic science, the researchers obtained a physically consistent and spatially continuous representation of the global ice-sheet evolution under time-evolving climate conditions.
The simulation reveals that following the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, the Antarctic ice sheet entered a new dynamical regime. In particular, the results identify a critical atmospheric CO2 level of around 240 parts per million, below which the amplitude of Antarctic ice variations suddenly increases in response to changes in atmospheric and ocean temperatures (Fig. 1).
“After this transition, the Antarctic ice sheet reacts much more strongly to changes in climate forcing. This indicates that the system does not evolve gradually but instead becomes more responsive after crossing a particular threshold in the climate system,” said Dr. YUN Kyung-Sook, researcher at the IBS Center for Climate Physics and lead author of the study.
In the computer model simulation, the accelerated Antarctic ice growth after the 1 million years ago can be attributed to a combination of factors: i) colder glacial ocean temperatures, which reduce melting of the Antarctic ice sheet below sea level, ii) lower global sea level (~50-100 m below present), which reduces the pressure on the bedrock below the ice shelves, leading to a slow uplift which further promotes ice thickening along the coast of Antarctica. Working in unison, these processes helped establish the larger and more persistent Antarctic ice sheets characteristic of later ice age cycles (Fig. 2).
“Our findings suggest that the Antarctic ice sheet was more sensitive to external forcings than previously assumed. This also raises important questions about its future response to global warming,” said Prof. Axel TIMMERMANN, Director of the IBS Center for Climate Physics and co-author of the study.
The study highlights that ice sheets do not respond linearly to climate forcing but instead can undergo sharp shifts that drastically alter their sensitivity to external factors. Understanding these changes is critical for improving projections of future sea level rise.
Ross Sea ice-shelf transect for low-CO₂ conditions, corresponding to high sensitivity to forcings: (left) climate contribution, (middle) sea-level contribution, and (right) combined impacts of climate and sea-level changes.
Increased sensitivity of Antarctic Ice Sheet to decreasing CO2 across the Mid-Pleistocene Transition
Article Publication Date
28-May-2026
Monday, May 25, 2026
'It's blue!': Scientists discover new deep-sea octopus near Galapagos Islands
Scientists have discovered a new species of octopus nearly 1,800 metres below the water's surface near the Galapagos Islands. The team from the Charles Darwin Foundation named the “tiny” cerulean cephalopod Microeledone galapagensis because of its blue hue, which is believed to be the rarest colour in nature.
On the ocean floor near the Galapagos Islands, a submersible controlled by scientists came across a mysterious octopus as blue as the ocean and no bigger than a golf ball.
"He's tiny! It's blue!" one excited scientist was recorded as saying when she first caught sight of the cerulean cephalopod on footage transmitted from the sub.
The team from the Charles Darwin Foundation had just discovered a new species of octopus nearly 1,800 metres below the water's surface, according to research published on Monday.
"Right away, I knew it was something really special," said octopus expert Janet Voight, who was asked to identify the strange species.
At first the curator at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago had to make do with photos of the animal.
Then she received its preserved body in the mail.
"When it arrived, I was like 'Oh! My goodness! It's beautiful'," Voight said.
She was immediately interested because the closest known octopus of that shape lives off the coast of Uruguay – in a different ocean on the other side of South America.
Normally to describe a new octopus species, a specimen needs to be cut open so that its mouth, beak, teeth and other parts can be examined.
"We only had the one specimen, so I didn't want to take it apart," Voight said.
Instead, the team at the Field Museum used CT scans to take thousands of X-ray images, then compiled them to make a 3D model of the octopus, revealing its insides.
"There's nothing like spending the day looking at something no other human has ever seen," the Field Museum's X-ray lab head Stephanie Smith said in a statement.
'Deep purple'
The new species, named Microeledone galapagensis, stands out for reasons other than its blue hue, which is believed to be the rarest colour in nature.
The octopus appears to be the runt of the Megaleledonidae family, whose members are normally much larger and live in the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica.
"Its stubby little arms with only one row of suckers set it apart from most octopus we are familiar with," Voight said.
Even among "other species with short little arms and a single sucker row, its colouration and smooth skin on the back surface separate it", she added.
While the octopus is light blue on its back, underneath it is a "very deep purple", Voight said.
"We think this colour pattern helps keep it safe. If the octopus grabs a prey item that emits light, that light may attract predators that might then eat the octopus," she explained.
"So the octopus puts its dark-coloured web over the prey item, keeping itself safe."
Surprisingly, it is not uncommon to find new species of octopus in the deep sea – particularly in areas that have not been well explored, which is a massive amount of the ocean floor.
"If you took all the land on Earth and pieced it together, you would not cover the Pacific Ocean," Voight pointed out.
She added that she had last seen a new octopus in 2023, off the coast of Costa Rica.
The first sighting of the new blue octopus was made in 2015 near Darwin Island, named after the English scientist whose visit to the Galapagos helped him form the theory of evolution.
Voight's research on the species was published in the journal Zootaxa.
