Five-year average of temperature change around Zyryanka, Siberia compared with the late 1800s. Data: Berkeley Earth. Graphic: The Washington Post

Radical warming in Siberia leaves millions on unstable ground – “The permafrost is thawing so fast, we scientists can’t keep up anymore”

By Anton Troianovski and Chris Mooney 3 October 2019 ON THE ZYRYANKA RIVER, Russia (The Washington Post) – Andrey Danilov eased his motorboat onto the gravel riverbank, where the bones of a woolly mammoth lay scattered on the beach. A putrid odor filled the air — the stench of ancient plants and animals decomposing after […]

An expedition aboard the “Academic Mstislav Keldysh” discovered a 50-square-foot patch of bubbling methane in the East Siberian Sea Photo: Shirshov Institute of Oceanology

Russian scientists find giant methane fountains in Arctic Ocean – “This is the most powerful seep I have ever been able to observe”

By Alec Luhn 8 October 2019 MOSCOW (The Telegraph) – Russian scientists in the Arctic Ocean said they have discovered the most powerful methane gas fountain ever recorded, highlighting the danger of this greenhouse gas accelerating climate change or causing an oil or gas spill as it erupts from thawing permafrost. A research expedition from […]

Map showing 2015–2019 five-year average temperature anomalies relative to the 1981-2010 average. Data: NASA GISTEMP v4. through June 2019. Graphic: WMO

Landmark “United in Science” report brings together world’s leading climate science organizations

NEW YORK, 22 September 2019 (WMO) – The world’s leading climate science organizations have joined forces to produce a landmark new report  [pdf] for the United Nations Climate Action Summit, underlining the glaring – and growing – gap between agreed targets to tackle global warming and the actual reality. The report, United in Science, includes details on the […]

Satellite view of Humboldt glacier Venezuela in 1985, 2008, and 2019. Photo: Maxar Technologies

Hardy scientists trek to Venezuela’s last glacier amid chaos – “More than 50 million people in South America rely on water provision from the Andes”

By Christina Larson and Federica Narancio 24 September 2019 MERIDA, Venezuela (AP) – Blackouts shut off the refrigerators where the scientists keep their lab samples. Gas shortages mean they sometimes have to work from home. They even reuse sheets of paper to record field data because fresh supplies are so scarce. As their country falls […]

Aerial view of cargo ships stranded on the Lena river in Siberia, 27 August 2019. In the regional capital of Yakutsk, the Lena river water level dropped so suddenly that hundreds of cargo ships and smaller boats were left stranded in the sand. It was this summer’s unusual heat that caused the record drought. Photo: Ruslan Ochirov

World’s largest permafrost river dries to a record low – “The abnormal heat recorded in Eastern Siberia in July and August, combined with lack of precipitation caused extremely shallow waters”

27 August 2019 (The Siberian Times) – Lena River fleet cannot sail after abnormal heat causes 2.5 metre water level drop. The current water level means critical delays in the summer ritual delivering vital supplies to Arctic settlements in Yakutia, Russia’s biggest region. Most of its remote corners are only accessible via water, with the […]

Women fetch water from an opening made at a dried-up lake in Chennai, India, on 11 June 2019. Photo: P. Ravikumar / Reuters

India is running out of water – “If nothing changes, and fast, things will get much worse, with severe water scarcity on the horizon for hundreds of millions”

By Bill Spindle and Gareth Phillips 19 August 2019 LEH, India (The Wall Street Journal) – The Ladakh region of northern India is one of the world’s highest, driest inhabited places. For centuries, meltwater from winter snows in the Himalayan mountains sustained the tiny villages dotting this remote land. Now, like many other places in […]

Weather projection on 21 August 2019 showing extreme low pressure headed for the northern Canada, causing an “Arctic ice smasher” storm that is arriving about two months early for the Arctic. Graphic: The Weather Network

Extreme ice smasher storm headed for the Arctic, two months early

By Tyler Hamilton 21 August 2019 (The Weather Network) – This storm is about two months early for the Arctic. Later this week a rare system will make its way into the Arctic Ocean. This system’s pressure centre is expected to dip to an unusually low value for the month of August. Just how low? […]

Large rivers of melting water form on an ice sheet in western Greenland on 1 August 2019 and drain into moulin holes that empty into the ocean from underneath the ice. The heat wave that smashed high temperature records in five European countries a passed over Greenland, accelerating the melting of the island's ice sheet and causing massive ice loss in the Arctic. Photo: Caspar Haarløv / Into the Ice / AP

Bizarre happenings in the Arctic: Lightning, tropical moisture, and more

By Bob Henson 14 August 2019 (Weather Underground) – You’ll have to forgive the Arctic. It’s had a rough summer. Sea ice is running neck and neck with 2012 for the lowest values on record for this time of year. Wildfires are ringing the Arctic, pouring more carbon dioxide into the air than in any comparable period in 17 […]

Satellite views of the Okjökull glacier in Iceland in 1986 and 2019. Data: Landsat / U.S. Geological Survey. Photo: Joshua Stevens / NASA Earth Observatory

Iceland commemorates first glacier lost to global warming – “The world that we learned how it was, learned by heart as some kind of eternal fact, is not a fact any more”

By Toby Luckhurst 18 August 2019 (BBC News) – Mourners have gathered in Iceland to commemorate the loss of Okjokull, which has died at the age of about 700. The glacier was officially declared dead in 2014 when it was no longer thick enough to move. What once was glacier has been reduced to a […]

Linkages between Amundsen Sea winds and global SST and SLP. Time series of zonal wind and zonal total stress over the PITT box, the SOI and the IPO. The legend shows the unit for each time series, and scaling for the axis values where appropriate. Graphic: Holland, et al., 2019 / Nature Geoscience

First evidence of human-caused climate change melting the West Antarctic Ice Sheet

12 August 2019 (British Antarctic Survey) – A new study published this week reveals the first evidence of a direct link between human-induced global warming and melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. UK-US researchers say that curbing greenhouse gas emissions now could reduce the future sea-level contribution from this region. Ice loss in West […]

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