By Hannah Hickey 13 February 2013 (University of Washington) – The September 2012 record low in Arctic sea-ice extent was big news, but a missing piece of the puzzle was lurking below the ocean’s surface. What volume of ice floats on Arctic waters? And how does that compare to previous summers? These are difficult but […]
By Monte Morin12 February 2013 (Los Angeles Times) – Ancient plant and animal matter trapped within Arctic permafrost can be converted rapidly into climate-warming carbon dioxide when melted and exposed to sunlight, according to a new study. In a report published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of environmental […]
By MARY PILON5 February 2013 WILLOW, Alaska (The New York Times) – By 9:30 most mornings here in the world’s unofficial dog-sledding capital, Luan Marques has harnessed 10 Alaskan huskies to his sled and shot off into the awakening woods for a training ride, his sights set on the famous Iditarod competition next month. The […]
By Becky Oskin, OurAmazingPlanet 1 February 2013 The scene of the crime: The Arctic. The suspect: The Great Arctic Cyclone of August 2012. The victim: The Arctic sea ice, which melted to a record low area last year. “The Great Arctic Cyclone of August 2012″ arose in Siberia on 2 August 2012 and crossed the […]
By dana198130 January 2013 A paper recently published in Global Environmental Change by Brysse, et al., (2012) examined a number of past predictions made by climate scientists, and found that that they have tended to be too conservative in their projections of the impacts of climate change. The authors thus suggest that climate scientists […]
Bremerhaven, 15 January 2013 (AWI) – The Arctic sea ice has not only declined over the past decade but has also become distinctly thinner and younger. Researchers are now observing mainly thin, first-year ice floes which are extensively covered with melt ponds in the summer months where once metre-thick, multi-year ice used to float. Sea […]
By Carol Browner and John Podesta 17 January 2013 The Arctic Ocean is subject to some of the most volatile weather patterns on the planet. Geologists believe it also contains vast undersea oil and gas reserves. Last year, the Arctic’s ice cover shrank to the lowest levels in recorded history and, not coincidentally, Royal Dutch […]
By Ned Potter5 January 2013 (ABC News) – The narwhal, a kind of Arctic whale, has been called “the unicorn of the sea” because of the long, straight, often spiraling tusk that males of the species can grow. It is illegal to import the tusks into the United States because narwhals are listed by the […]
By Ned Rozell31 December 2012 Anchorage, Alaska (Anchorage Daily News) – In almost every patch of boreal forest in Interior Alaska that Glenn Juday has studied since the 1980s, at least one quarter of the aspen, white spruce, and birch trees are dead. “These are mature forest stands that were established 120 to 200 years […]
By FELICITY BARRINGER31 December 2012 (The New York Times) – The record-setting disappearance of Arctic sea ice this fall was an indication to many climate scientists and ice experts that the pace of climate change was outstripping predictions. Now a new study published this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters provides a look at […]
