Forget the Melting Arctic, Sea Ice in Antarctica is Growing!
The ice that covers the Arctic Ocean has plummeted to its lowest level on record — but down at the other end of the world, the sea ice surrounding Antarctica has swelled. That’s no surprise, considering that winter is just ending in the Southern Hemisphere — but what may be surprising is that the overall extent of Antarctic ice has grown by about o… Read More
New Study Shows How Fast Ice Sheets Can Change
A new paper released Thursday in Science says that ice can respond a lot faster than anyone had thought. Studies like this one are key to finding out, and the closer scientists look, the more they realize how rapidly glaciers can change their behavior over the short term.… Read More
Antarctic Methane: A New Factor in the Climate Equation
Climate scientists have long fretted about the hundreds of billions of tons of methane frozen under the floor of the Arctic Ocean. If the water warms enough, some of that methane could escape. Nobody knows how soon or how quickly such a release might happen, but since methane is a far more potent heat-trapping gas than the more familiar carbon… Read More
Report: Most Antarctic Peninsula Warming Human-Caused
The debate over whether global warming is natural or manmade is absurd: scientists know that both factors play apart. The real question is which one is doing the heavy lifting — and a new report in Nature says that in one part of the world, at least, human influences have been by far the most important over the past five decades, at least The area… Read More
Sea Level Rise: It Could Be Worse than We Think
A new analysis released Thursday in the journal Science implies that the seas could rise dramatically higher over the next few centuries than scientists previously thought — somewhere between 18-to-29 feet above current levels, rather than the 13-to-20 feet than the numbers they were talking about just a few years ago. The increase in sea level … Read More
Tiny Frigid Bubbles Get to the Core of Climate Change
As Michael Bender prepared to lead the way into the storage area of his lab at Princeton University, he gave a visitor a quizzical look. “You really might want to put these on, he said, holding up a bulky red parka and a pair of thick gloves. “Oh, I’ll be fine, said his guest. “No, really, Bender insisted gently. “It would be a good idea. A … Read More
The Bad News Continues to Flow About Antarctica’s Ice
It’s just two weeks since a paper in Nature flagged an ominous thinning of ice shelves along parts the Antarctica coast lying due south of the Pacific Ocean. The ice appears to be melting from below, as changing ocean currents are bringing relatively warm water to bathe the shelves’ undersides — and as the ice shelves lose mass, they also lose … Read More
Antarctic Ice Shelves Melting from Below, Study Finds
Antarctica holds an absurdly large amount of ice — 3.5 million cubic miles’ worth — so it’s reassuring to know that it isn’t all going to melt anytime soon. If it did, sea level would go up about 180 ft., causing unimaginable devastation. But even with any reasonable projection for global warming, the air over Antarctica simply won’t get warm … Read More
