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It is with great sadness that we must communicate with the BELARE community that one of our team members, Craig Masson, passed away on Friday the 16th of May, following an accident at work.

Prof. Eric Rignot from UC Irvine discusses his work following a successful field campaign on the King Baudouin Ice Shelf in East Antarctica during the 2024-25 BELgian Antarctic Research Expedition (BELARE).

Graduate student Ratnakar Gadi from UC Irvine’s Department of Earth System Science made history by successfully defending his Ph.D. dissertation in an extraordinary setting—Belgium’s Princess Elisabeth Antarctica. It was only the second thesis defense ever conducted from Earth’s southernmost continent.

The soon-to-be-released film 2050 by renowned filmmakers Eric Goens and Kristoff Van Den Bergh financed by Syensqo has been shown in a few locations to much acclaim prior to its official release date of March 5th in cinemas across Belgium.

Wildfires in California, floods in Spain and the Ardennes, Hurricane Hélène leaving a trail of destruction across the United States… The climate record of 2024 is devastating: the hottest year ever recorded, with 219 officially registered weather disasters and thousands of victims.

BELARE 2024-25 is drawing to a close. Preparations are being made to put the Princess Elisabeth Antarctica into winter mode and pack away scientific equipment.

This week the four remaining scientific teams for this season - EXPOSOILS, PASPARTOUT, NISAR, and EPFL-CRYOS - wrapped up their work and started preparing for their flight home, which is scheduled for Friday, February 14th.

The cargo ship has been unloaded and the logistics team led by Alain Hubert has been caught in a storm on the way back to PEA. Meanwhile, the scientists continue their field work, which will finish by next week.

Belgian and international scientists from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) have returned from Antarctica with samples and data that could help them determine where to find million-year old ice, which in turn can provide information about Earth’s climate in the past.

With their safety training complete, this past week the newly arrived scientists headed out into the field to begin their field work while the IPF team prepared for the arrival of the cargo ship at the coast.