“Catastrophic” breeding failure at one of world’s largest emperor penguin colonies after three consecutive years of sea-ice collapse – “Such a complete failure to breed successfully is unprecedented at this site”

25 April 2019 (BAS) – Emperor penguins at the Halley Bay colony in the Weddell Sea have failed to raise chicks for the last three years, scientists have discovered. Researchers from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) studied very high resolution satellite imagery to reveal the unusual findings, published today (25 April 2019) in the journal Antarctic […]

25th anniversary edition of WMO’s State of the Climate report shows accelerating global warming impacts – “The data released in this report give cause for great concern”

28 March 2019 (WMO) – The physical signs and socio-economic impacts of climate change are accelerating as record greenhouse gas concentrations drive global temperatures toward increasingly dangerous levels, according to a new report from the World Meteorological Organization. The WMO Statement on the State of the Global Climate in 2018, its 25th anniversary edition, highlights […]

Huge cavity in Antarctic glacier signals rapid decay

By Carol Rasmussen 30 January 2019(Jet Propulsion Laboratory) – A gigantic cavity – two-thirds the area of Manhattan and almost 1,000 feet (300 meters) tall – growing at the bottom of Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is one of several disturbing discoveries reported in a new NASA-led study of the disintegrating glacier. The findings highlight […]

New global study reveals rising soil temperatures in permafrost regions around the world – “The permafrost isn’t simply warming on a local and regional scale, but worldwide and at virtually the same pace as climate warming”

16 January 2019 (AWI) – Global warming is leaving more and more apparent scars in the world’s permafrost regions. As the new global comparative study conducted by the international permafrost network GTN-P shows, in all regions with permafrost soils the temperature of the frozen ground at a depth of more than 10 metres rose by […]

Antarctica losing six times more ice mass annually now than 40 years ago – “We expect multi-meter sea level rise from Antarctica in the coming centuries”

IRVINE, California, 14 January 2019 (UCI) – Antarctica experienced a sixfold increase in yearly ice mass loss between 1979 and 2017, according to a study published today in  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Glaciologists from the University of California, Irvine, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Netherlands’ Utrecht University additionally found that the […]

Antarctic sea ice is “astonishingly” low this melt season

By Eric Holthaus3 January 2019 (Grist) – Right now, on the shores of Antarctica, there’s open water crashing against the largest ice shelf in the world. The annual ice-free season has begun at the Ross Ice Shelf — a month ahead of schedule. The frozen region of freshwater ice the size of France partially protects […]

Largest king penguin colony has shrunk nearly 90 percent since 1982

30 July 2018 (CNRS) – The world’s biggest colony of king penguins is found in the National Nature Reserve of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands (TAAF). Using high-resolution satellite images, researchers from the Chizé Centre for Biological Studies (CNRS / University of La Rochelle)1 have detected a massive 88% reduction in the size of […]

Diving robots find Antarctic winter seas exhale surprising amounts of carbon dioxide

By Hannah Hickey 14 August 2018 (UW News) – More than 100 oceanic floats are now diving and drifting in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica during the peak of winter. These instruments are gathering data from a place and season that remains very poorly studied, despite its important role in regulating the global climate.A new […]

Planet at risk of heading toward “Hothouse Earth” state – “Places on Earth will become uninhabitable”

6 August 2018 (Stockholm Resilience Centre) – An international team of scientists has published a study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) showing that even if the carbon emission reductions called for in the Paris Agreement are met, there is a risk of Earth entering what the scientists call “Hothouse Earth” conditions.A […]

The giant iceberg that broke from Antarctica’s Larsen C ice shelf is stuck, threatening to destabilize more of the continent’s ice

By Leah Rosenbaum 23 July 2018 (Science News) – Curl the fingers of your left hand over your palm and stick out your thumb like a hitchhiker. Now, you have a rough map of Antarctica — with the inside of your thumb playing the part of the Larsen C ice shelf, says glaciologist Ted Scambos […]

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