Stories by Alison Ballance

Emma Carroll talks about the return of southern right whales from the edge of extinction and a project asking the public to report whale sightings.

Take some old weather records. Add citizen scientists. Mix in machine learning. Result = something that might help predict future weather patterns.

Tiny plants that live on the underside of sea ice form an upside-down garden that feeds krill and is the base of the Antarctic food web.

Researchers are using hot water to drill through the Ross ice shelf, to discover what has happened to Antarctic ice during previous periods of warm climates.

Alison Ballance eavesdrops on the songs of the world's southern-most mammal, the Weddell seal, and finds out about sea ice.

A team finding links between melting ice sheets in Antarctica and rising sea levels in NZ has won the 2019 Prime Minister's Science Prize.

Student Thomas James wanted to help his elderly neighbour, so he invented a wheelie bin robot to take her large recycling bin to the kerb.

Michelle Dalrymple, winner of the 2019 Prime Minister's Science Teacher's Prize, says being mathematically literate is an important life skill.

Emperor penguin researchers are waiting for tagged birds to return, and an elderly radar system sheds light on a very windy part of the atmosphere.

Alison Ballance meets a colony of Emperor penguins and their NIWA researchers, and finds out about making water on the frozen continent

Keeping Scott Base warm and well-lit no matter the weather outside, and a physics experiment that eavesdrops on messages to submarines.

Alison Ballance has her first day at New Zealand's Antarctic station, Scott Base, and visits the historic Hillary's Hut.

Alison Ballance dons her extreme cold weather clothing for a trip to Antarctica - but getting to the frozen continent can take time.

Scientists warn that a small amount of sea-level rise could have big consequences for some low-lying parts of New Zealand.

Ocean floor rock cores drilled into the sunken continent of Zealandia are revolutionising our understanding of Earth's history and how continents form.

More than four months after it formed, a large blob of sooty dust from Australia's massive bushfires is still circling the southern hemisphere.

There is a fine art to how pedestrians, cyclists, and cars and buses navigate the shared thoroughfares of our towns and cities.

Modern-day citizen scientists are following in the footsteps of a well-known Wellington naturalist, collecting moths to document a century of change.

Mathematician Alex James, from Te Pūnaha Matatini & the University of Canterbury, explains the art and science of modelling the coronavirus pandemic.

The human immune system is a complex system where T cells, B cells and antibodies battle invaders such as bacteria and viruses such as the one that causes COVID-19.

Virus expert Kurt Krause, from the University of Otago, gives us the lowdown on viruses, and on coronaviruses in particular.

GNS Science monitors levels of air pollution around New Zealand, especially small particles that can have severe health effects.

The 2019 kākāpō chicks are becoming independent and birds sent to be scanned for aspergillosis are getting clean bills of health, in part 8 of Voice of the Kākāpō.

A deadly fungal disease strikes the kākāpō population on Whenua Hou and the Kākāpō Recovery team calls on New Zealand wildlife vets to help, in part 7 of Voice of the Kākāpō..

The kākāpō eggs are hatching, and chicks are being hand-reared or returned to their mother's nest ... but not every chick is thriving, in part 6 of Voice of the Kākāpō .