The ‘blue blob’: Changes in Atlantic happening sooner than expected – ‘We like to think of climate as an elephant moving slowly along, but the ocean system is not that simple’

[cf. Why some scientists are worried about a surprisingly cold ‘blob’ in the North Atlantic Ocean – ‘The fact that a record-hot planet Earth coincides with a record-cold northern Atlantic is quite stunning’] By Lisa Sorg4 November 2015 (Coastal Review) – There it is, hanging out in the northern Atlantic Ocean, off the southern tip […]

Vast Alpine glacier will almost vanish by 2100 due to warming – ‘When I look at the glaciers I think of my children. That scares me.’

By Denis Balibouse and Alister Doyle; Editing by Frances Kerry17 October 2015 (Reuters) – One of Europe’s biggest glaciers, the Great Aletsch, coils 23 km (14 miles) through the Swiss Alps – and yet this mighty river of ice could almost vanish in the lifetimes of people born today because of climate change. The glacier, […]

Are we experiencing exponentially increasing sea level rise?

Guest post by Alexander Ač9 October 2015 (Desdemona Despair) – Sea level rise (SLR) is recognized as one of the least adaptable impacts of ongoing climate change. Once a certain area is permanently flooded with saline water, people have to leave. Forever. Thus SLR projections gain a lot of attention not only in the climate […]

Why some scientists are worried about a surprisingly cold ‘blob’ in the North Atlantic Ocean – ‘The fact that a record-hot planet Earth coincides with a record-cold northern Atlantic is quite stunning’

By Chris Mooney25 September 2015 (Washington Post) – It is, for our home planet, an extremely warm year. Indeed, last week we learned from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that the first eight months of 2015 were the hottest such stretch yet recorded for the globe’s surface land and oceans, based on temperature records […]

NASA zeroes in on ocean rise – ‘It’s pretty certain we are locked into at least 3 feet of sea level rise, and probably more’

26 August 2015 (NASA/JPL) – Seas around the world have risen an average of nearly 3 inches (8 centimeters) since 1992, with some locations rising more than 9 inches (25 centimeters) due to natural variation, according to the latest satellite measurements from NASA and its partners. An intensive research effort now underway, aided by NASA […]

World’s glaciers melting at fastest rate since record-keeping began – ‘Globally, we lose about three times the ice volume stored in the entirety of the European Alps every year’

3 August 2015 (University of Zurich) – The World Glacier Monitoring Service, domiciled at the University of Zurich, has compiled worldwide data on glacier changes for more than 120 years. Together with its National Correspondents in more than 30 countries, the international service just published a new comprehensive analysis of global glacier changes in the […]

Alaska’s wildfire season of 2015 may be the state’s worst ever – ‘What happens in the summer of 2015 has the potential to change the whole trajectory for the next 100 years or more’

By Chris Mooney 26 July 2015 FAIRBANKS, Alaska (Washington Post) – Hundreds of wildfires are continually whipping across this state this summer, leaving in their wake millions of acres of charred trees and blackened earth. At the Fairbanks compound of the state’s Division of Forestry recently, workers were busy washing a mountain of soot-covered fire […]

Climate scientists: When the end of human civilization is your day job – ‘The business-as-usual world that we project is really a totally different planet’

By John H. Richardson7 July 2015 (Esquire) – The incident was small, but Jason Box doesn’t want to talk about it. He’s been skittish about the media since it happened. This was last summer, as he was reading the cheery blog posts transmitted by the chief scientist on the Swedish icebreaker Oden, which was exploring […]

As globe warms, melting glaciers revealing more than bare earth

By Tim Johnson19 June 2015 (McClatchy) – As a result of warming temperatures, Mexico’s tallest volcano, Pico de Orizaba, is performing an all-natural striptease, the ice patches near its summit melting away to bare rock. The same process is taking place in the permafrost of Russia, the ice fields of the Yukon and the glaciers […]

Graph of the Day: Glacier decline in southern Alaska, 1994-2013

By Kathryn Hansen7 July 2015 (NASA) – Airborne surveys of southern Alaska have helped scientists get a better handle on where ice is being lost from this heavily glaciated region. Melting ice from Alaskan glaciers is estimated to be one of the main contributors to global sea level rise. The maps above show changes to […]

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial