At 5 a.m. local time today (January 28), U.S. researchers successfully completed boring a 30-centimeter-diameter hole through 800 meters of Antarctic ice, piercing into Lake Whillans. It’s one of a series of interconnected subglacial lakes that periodically fill and drain. Scientists estimate that the lake’s water, which flows beneath the Whillans Ice Stream, has not had contact with the atmosphere for untold millennia.Research teams from Russia, the United Kingdom and United States have each spearheaded drilling efforts over the past few years to pierce and sample separate subglacial Anta...

Irrigation has downstream effects on climate and runoff to Colorado River. (p. 16)

Cooler periods coincided with conflicts and disease outbreaks, a tree-ring study spanning the last millennium finds. (p. 18)

Previously sculpted landscapes accumulate ice more quickly than steep valleys. (p. 13)

Lab studies could explain how a seemingly stable geologic fault can fail. (p. 13)

A British-led team has called off this season’s campaign to penetrate Lake Ellsworth. (p. 9)

A reconstructed temperature record from a high-altitude station shows an unexpectedly rapid rise since 1958. (p. 9)