Antarctica may appear frozen and still, but beneath its vast ice sheet lies one of Earth’s most remarkable volcanic regions.

In this episode of the Lava Academy Podcast, Iain MacKinnon and Ragnhildur Ágústsdóttir are joined by Ann-Sophie Bader, who divides her year between working at Lava Show in Vík and a remote tourism camp in Antarctica.

Ann-Sophie takes us beneath the ice to explore:

• The volcanic landscape hidden beneath West Antarctica
• How scientists find volcanoes buried under kilometres of ice
• Deception Island and the enormous eruption that created its flooded caldera
• Mount Erebus, the southernmost active volcano on Earth
• The rare, persistent lava lake inside Erebus
• Why its unusual phonolite lava behaves differently from Icelandic basalt
• How Erebus produces volcanic bombs and releases microscopic particles of gold
• The relationship between volcanic heat, moving glaciers and Antarctic ice loss

Ann-Sophie also shares what it is like to live and work at Union Glacier, surrounded by ice, mountains and one of the most remote environments on the planet.

From hidden volcanoes and gold-carrying gases to molten lava surviving in extreme cold, this episode reveals an Antarctic landscape far more dynamic than it first appears.

• Science Educator Sævar Helgi Bragason talks about volcanoes in space

• Hólmfríður Sigurðardóttir, and Birgir Vilhelm Óskarsson discuss the unique volcanic island of Surtsey

Discover more volcano stories through Lava Academy at https://www.lavashow.com/blog/lava-academy