Antarctica – Page 3 – Desdemona Despair

Map of Thwaites Glacier shown in Landsat 8 satellite imagery collected in February 2019. The track of the mission of the autonomous underwater vehicle is shown in orange. Changes in grounding line positions of Thwaites Glacier in the recent past shown by colored lines. Graphic: Alastair Graham / University of South Florida

September 7, 2022

Antarctica “doomsday glacier” could raise global sea levels by 10 feet – “Thwaites is really holding on today by its fingernails”

By Li Cohen 6 September 2022 (CBS News) – The loss of a glacier the size of Florida in Antarctica could wreak havoc on the world as scientists expect it would raise global sea levels up to 10 feet. It’s already melting at a fast rate — and scientists say its collapse may only rapidly […]

Changes in global average sea level (background map) and local sea level (dots) between 1993 and 2021. In the global ocean, sea level has risen nearly everywhere (blue). Coastal areas where sea level has fallen (brown) are places where the land is rising as it rebounds from being compressed by ice sheets and glaciers during the last ice age. NOAA Climate.gov map, based on data from University of Hawaii Sea Level Center. Graphic: NOAA

September 4, 2022

American Meteorological Society report: Record-high greenhouse gases and sea levels in 2021 – Ocean heat content highest on record

31 August 2022 (NOAA) – Greenhouse gas concentrations, global sea levels and ocean heat content reached record highs in 2021, according to the 32nd annual State of the Climate report. The international annual review of the world’s climate, led by scientists from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information and published by the Bulletin of the […]

Antarctic sea ice extent for 25 February 2022, was 1.92 million square kilometers (741,000 square miles). The orange line shows the 1981 to 2010 average extent for that day. Graphic: National Snow and Ice Data Center

April 3, 2022

WMO: Antarctic heat, rain, and ice prompt concern – “This event is rewriting record books and our expectations about what is possible in Antarctica”

1 April 2022 (WMO) – Record high temperatures, rain and the collapse of an ice shelf in East Antarctica have prompted questions and concern about the possible role of climate change in the coldest and driest part of the world. Record high temperatures, rain and the collapse of an ice shelf in East Antarctica have […]

Satellite view of the Conger/Glenzer (Bowman Island) ice shelf collapse in March 2022. Scientists are concerned because the ice shelf collapsed in East Antarctica, an area that had long been thought to be stable. The collapse in March 2022 was the first time scientists have ever seen an ice shelf collapse in this cold area of Antarctica. Photo: NASA / AP

March 27, 2022

Thinning Antarctic ice shelf finally crumbles after extreme heatwave – “The Glenzer Conger ice shelf presumably had been there for thousands of years, and it’s never going to be there again”

By Isla Binnie 25 March 2022 (Reuters) – An East Antarctica ice shelf disintegrated this month following a period of extreme heat in the region, according to scientists. Satellite images show the 1,200 square-kilometre Conger Ice Shelf collapsed completely on or around March 15. “Possible it hit its tipping point following the #Antarctic #AtmosphericRiver and […]

Daily high surface temperature at Dome C at the top of the Antarctic Plateau, on 18 March 2022. Graphic: Dr. Robert Rohde

March 22, 2022

Graph of the Day: Daily high surface temperature at Dome C in Antarctica, 18 March 2022

By Dr. Robert Rohde 21 March 2022 (Twitter) – Heat wave in Antarctica, +38 °C (+68 °F) above normal. That’s not an error, or a typo. The remote research station at Dome C recorded a temperature nearly 40°C above normal for this time of year, beating the previous March record by a startling 20°C. […] […]

Simulation of 2m temperature anomaly centered over Antarctica on 18 March 2022. Parts of eastern Antarctica saw temperatures hover 70 degrees Fahrenheit (40 Celsius) above normal for more than three days. On 18 March 2022, the surface temperature in Vostok leaped to 0°F (-17.7 Celsius), the warmest it’s been there during March since record keeping began 65 years ago. It broke the previous monthly record by a staggering 27 degrees Fahrenheit (15 Celsius). Graphic: WeatherBell

March 20, 2022

It’s 70°F (40°C) warmer than normal in eastern Antarctica – “This event is completely unprecedented and upended our expectations about the Antarctic climate system”

By Jason Samenow and Kasha Patel 18 March 2022 (The Washington Post) – The coldest location on the planet has experienced an episode of warm weather this week unlike any ever observed, with temperatures over the eastern Antarctic ice sheet soaring 50 to 90 degrees above normal. The warmth has smashed records and shocked scientists. […]

$Satellite view of Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier on 28 December 2015 (left) and 31 March 2021 (right). On 13 December 2021, Ice scientists at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting in New Orleans warned that great cracks and fissures had opened up both on top of and underneath the Thwaites glacier, one of the biggest in the world, and it may fracture and collapse, possibly within five years. Photo: ESA Sentinel-1$

December 22, 2021

Antarctica’s “doomsday” glacier: how its collapse could trigger global floods and swallow islands – “If Thwaites were to collapse, it would drag most of West Antarctica’s ice with it”

By Ella Gilbert 22 December 2021 (The Conversation) – The massive Thwaites glacier in West Antarctica contains enough ice to raise global sea levels by 65 centimeters if it were to completely collapse. And, worryingly, recent research suggests that its long-term stability is doubtful as the glacier haemorrhages more and more ice. Adding 65 centimeters to global sea levels […]

Sateliite data showing the 2021 Antarctic ozone hole, which reached its maximum area on 7 October 2021 and ranked as the 13th-largest such feature since 1979. This view, from a NASA video, shows its current extent based on satellite data. Data: Paul Newman and Eric Nash / NASA / Ozone Watch. Graphic: Joshua Stevens

November 7, 2021

Video: Larger-than-average ozone hole over Antarctica in 2021 – Ozone layer recovery slower than anticipated, will be no earlier than 2070

By Elizabeth Howell 5 November 2021 (Space.com) – A new NASA video highlights the giant ozone hole that opened over Antarctica this year. A cold Southern Hemisphere winter, and possible effects of global warming, have caused the hole to grow to its 13th-largest extent since 1979. The ozone depletion you see in the NASA video is monitored by three […]

Time series of climate-related responses to anthropogenic drivers, 1990-2020. Out of the 31 tracked planetary vital signs, 18 were at new all-time record lows or highs in 2020. Data obtained before and after the publication of Ripple and colleagues (2020) are shown in gray and red respectively. For variables with relatively high variability, local regression trend lines are shown in black. The variables were measured at various frequencies (e.g., annual, monthly, weekly). The labels on the x-axis correspond to midpoints of years. Sources and additional details about each variable are provided in the supplemental material. Graphic: Ripple, et al., 2021 / BioScience

July 31, 2021

World scientists’ warning of a climate emergency 2021 – Humans face untold suffering from “the consequences of unrelenting business as usual”

28 July 2021 (BioScience) – In 2019, Ripple and colleagues (2020) warned of untold suffering and declared a climate emergency together with more than 11,000 scientist signatories from 153 countries. They presented graphs of planetary vital signs indicating very troubling trends, along with little progress by humanity to address climate change. On the basis of […]

Deep water underneath the Thwaites ice shelf front is lighter than water outside the ice shelf. (A) Map of trough T3 showing the AUV path color coded by latitude. Shaded region indicates the ice shelf front, and black contours are depth contours. (B) Conservative temperature θ (in degrees Celsius) versus absolute salinity SA (in grams per kilogram) for the AUV data points shown in (A), colors as in (A). Contours show potential density (9) relative to 900 m, and blue arrow indicates isopycnal mixing, i.e., water that has the same density but different temperatures and salinities. Green circles in (A) and (B) show the dense saline deep water found in trough T3 discussed in the main text. (C) Absolute salinity SA (in grams per kilogram) as a function of depth for the AUV data in trough T3 and the CTD data (colors indicate station as in Fig. 3). (D) Potential density (in kilograms per cubic meter) as a function of depth for the AUV data in trough T3 and the CTD data (colors indicate station as in Figs. 3 and 4). Red and blue arrows indicate the two deep water masses discussed in the main text from Pine Island Bay and Thwaites Trough. Dissolved oxygen versus θ and SA is shown in fig. S6. Graphic: Wåhlin, et al., 2021 / Science Advances

April 11, 2021

Exploration of ocean currents beneath the “Doomsday Glacier” by an autonomous underwater vehicle – Net melting of 75 cubic km of ice per year means “the glacier is not stable over time”

9 April 2021 (University of Gothenburg) – For the first time, researchers have been able to obtain data from underneath Thwaites Glacier, also known as the “Doomsday Glacier”. They find that the supply of warm water to the glacier is larger than previously thought, triggering concerns of faster melting and accelerating ice flow. With the […]