The big melt: Antarctica’s retreating ice may re-shape Earth – ‘We have to stop it; or we have to slow it down as best as we can’

By Luis Andres Henao and Seth Borenstein28 February 2015 CAPE LEGOUPIL, Antarctica (Associated Press) – From the ground in this extreme northern part of Antarctica, spectacularly white and blinding ice seems to extend forever. What can’t be seen is the battle raging thousands of feet (hundreds of meters) below to re-shape Earth. Water is eating […]

Graph of the Day: Observed and projected snowfall decline in Australia, 1958-2090

27 January 2015 (CSIRO) – Snowfall in the Australian alps is projected to decrease, especially at low elevations. There is very high confidence that as warming progresses there will be a decrease in snowfall, an increase in snowmelt and thus reduced snow cover. These trends will be large compared to natural variability and most evident […]

Image of the Day: Satellite view of rift propagation across Larsen C ice shelf, January 2015

ABSTRACT: An established rift in the Larsen C Ice Shelf, formerly constrained by a suture zone containing marine ice, grew rapidly during 2014 and is likely in the near future to generate the largest calving event since the 1980s and result in a new minimum area for the ice shelf. Here we investigate the recent […]

Starved for energy, Pakistan braces for a water crisis – ‘In the next six to seven years, Pakistan can be a water-starved country’

By SALMAN MASOOD12 February 2015 ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (The New York Times) – Energy-starved Pakistanis, their economy battered by chronic fuel and electricity shortages, may soon have to contend with a new resource crisis: major water shortages, the Pakistani government warned this week. A combination of global climate change and local waste and mismanagement have led […]

Antarctic ice loss tripled in the last 10 years – ‘The mass loss of these glaciers is increasing at an amazing rate’

3 December 2014 (AFP) – The melt rate of glaciers in the fastest-melting part of Antarctica has tripled over the past decade, researchers said Tuesday in an analysis of the past 21 years. Glaciers in the Amundsen Sea in West Antarctica are losing ice faster than another part of Antarctica and are the biggest contributor […]

Melting Away: Beautiful polar photos tell a haunting story about global warming – ‘I stopped going because it felt so futile’

By Jakob Schiller  11 November 2014 (Wired) – When Camille Seaman started photographing icebergs and other arctic wonders, she wasn’t thinking about climate change. She simply found the frozen landscape and white vistas visually stunning. Still, you can’t help but associate her images with the ongoing conversation about climate change. Seaman, 45, says she too […]

Pentagon signals security risks of global warming – ‘Droughts and crop failures can leave millions of people without any lifeline, and trigger waves of mass migration’

By Coral Davenport13 October 2014 WASHINGTON (The New York Times) – The Pentagon on Monday released a report asserting decisively that climate change poses an immediate threat to national security, with increased risks from terrorism, infectious disease, global poverty, and food shortages. It also predicted rising demand for military disaster responses as extreme weather creates […]

Greenland Ice Sheet more vulnerable to climate change than previously thought – ‘Extreme meteorological events, such as heavy rainfall and heat waves, can have a large effect on the rate of ice loss’

Contact: Sarah Collinssarah.collins@admin.cam.ac.uk44-012-233-32300University of Cambridge@Cambridge_Uni29 September 2014 (University of Cambridge) – A new model developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge has shown that despite its apparent stability, the massive ice sheet covering most of Greenland is more sensitive to climate change than earlier estimates have suggested, which would accelerate the rising sea levels […]

Greenland ice loss doubles from late 2000s – Greenland and Antarctica together are losing 500 cubic kilometers of ice each year – ‘To us, that’s an incredible number’

By Jonathan Amos20 August 2014  (BBC News) – A new assessment from Europe’s CryoSat spacecraft shows Greenland to be losing about 375 cu km of ice each year. Added to the discharges coming from Antarctica, it means Earth’s two big ice sheets are now dumping roughly 500 cu km of ice in the oceans annually. […]

Graph of the Day: Mass balance of 30 reference glaciers, 1980-2012

By Mauri S. Pelto19 July 2014 (Glacier Cnange) – The World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) record of mass balance and terminus behavior (WGMS, 2013) provides a global index for alpine glacier behavior. Mass balance was -638 mm in 2012, negative for the 22nd consecutive year. Preliminary data for 2013 from Austria, Canada, Nepal, New Zealand, […]

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