Greenland’s Ice Sheet More Stable Than Once Believed
The enormous sheets of ice that lie atop Greenland may not be as prone to catastrophic melting as many scientists thought, even if the planet continues to warm and temperatures remain high for hundreds of years. But while that may sound like good news, new evidence also suggests that parts of the even vaster ice sheets that lie atop Antarctica … Read More
Sea Level Rise May Eclipse 3 Feet By 2100, Study Finds
The study adds to a growing body of evidence showing that the globe’s ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, which were once thought to have a slow and delayed response to climate change, are melting more rapidly, and becoming more vulnerable to crossing tipping points beyond which they may not quickly recover.… Read More
Sandy Tops List of 2012 Extreme Weather & Climate Events
From unprecedented heat waves that shattered "Dust Bowl" era records from the 1930s, to Hurricane Sandy, which devastated coastal New Jersey and New York, 2012 was the year Mother Nature had it out for the U.S. No country on Earth rivaled the U.S. in 2012 in terms of extreme weather and climate events, as one rare episode after another rocked the c… Read More
Soaring Temps in West Antarctica May Fuel Sea Level Rise
It’s a cause for serious concern, say the study’s authors: West Antarctica holds enough fresh water to raise sea level by 11 feet if all the ice melted, and even a fraction of that amount could prove catastrophic to coastal areas where hundreds of millions of people live.… Read More
Study Gives New Benchmark for How Much Ice is Melting
The vast ice sheets that cover Greenland and Antarctic have begun melting and sliding into the ocean as heat-trapping greenhouse gases continue to build in the atmosphere. How much and how fast the ice is disappearing, however, has been poorly understood, because the satellites that measure it haven’t always agreed. But a report published Thursday … Read More
Report Says IPCC Needs to Address Melting Permafrost
The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) released a report early Tuesday morning that recommended the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) address the impact of warming permafrost and the large volume of methane and carbon dioxide that will be emitted from the ground if permafrost continues to melt.… Read More
Winds Seen As Key Driver Of Antarctica’s Growing Sea Ice
Writing in Nature Geoscience, Paul Holland of the British Antarctic Survey and Ronald Kwok of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have found the case’s smoking gun. “Our main conclusion is that the drift of ice has changed over the past two decades, Holland said in an interview. “And we’ve linked these changes to changes in winds over that same perio… Read More
Ongoing Coverage of Earth’s Polar Regions
Earth’s polar regions — the Arctic and the Antarctic — are far from where most of us live. What’s happening there now as a result of climate change, however, will end up affecting us in very direct ways. Melting glaciers and ice caps are raising sea level worldwide, and new research released in 2012 shows that the melting, especially in Antarctica,… Read More
