World at risk of passing multiple climate tipping points above 1.5°C global warming

The location of climate tipping elements in the cryosphere (blue), biosphere (green) and ocean/atmosphere (orange), and global warming levels their tipping points will likely be triggered at 1.5°C. Researchers see signs of destabilisation already in parts of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, in permafrost regions, the Amazon rainforest, and potentially the Atlantic overturning circulation as well. Graphic: Earth Commission / Globaïa

September 25, 2022

World at risk of passing multiple climate tipping points above 1.5°C global warming

8 September 2022 (Stockholm Resilience Centre) – Multiple climate tipping points could be triggered if global temperature rises beyond 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, according to a major new analysis published in the journal Science. Even at current levels of global heating the world is already at risk of passing five dangerous climate tipping points, and risks […]

Greenland ice sheet flow sectors, individual catchments and peripheral ice caps with regional correspondence between annual values of mass balance and accumulation area ratio (AAR). The whiskers and ± quantities indicate ensemble single s.d. The ice sector outlines are after Morlighem, et al., 2017. Graphic: Box, et al., 2022 / Nature Climate Change

September 18, 2022

Glaciers and “zombie ice”: The planet is melting at both poles, research finds – “We are already into dangerous levels of greenhouse gases that will have consequences far beyond 10 inches of sea level rise”

By Matthew Rozsa 7 September 2022 (Salon) – That sea levels will rise as Earth’s ice melts is a prophecy that began to come true long ago, at the dawn of industrial civilization when humans began pumping vast amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Yet the timeline for sea level rise is not yet fully understood, nor do we really […]

Map of Thwaites Glacier shown in Landsat 8 satellite imagery collected in February 2019. The track of the mission of the autonomous underwater vehicle is shown in orange. Changes in grounding line positions of Thwaites Glacier in the recent past shown by colored lines. Graphic: Alastair Graham / University of South Florida

September 7, 2022

Antarctica “doomsday glacier” could raise global sea levels by 10 feet – “Thwaites is really holding on today by its fingernails”

By Li Cohen 6 September 2022 (CBS News) – The loss of a glacier the size of Florida in Antarctica could wreak havoc on the world as scientists expect it would raise global sea levels up to 10 feet. It’s already melting at a fast rate — and scientists say its collapse may only rapidly […]

(a) Annual mean temperature anomalies in the Arctic (66.5∘–90∘N) (dark colours) and globally (light colours) during 1950–2021 derived from the various observational datasets. Temperature anomalies have been calculated relative to the standard 30-year period of 1981–2010. Shown are also the linear temperature trends for 1979–2021. (b) Annual mean temperature trends for the period 1979–2021, derived from the average of the observational datasets. Areas without a statistically significant change are masked out. (c) Local amplification ratio calculated for the period 1979–2021, derived from the average of the observational datasets. The dashed line in (b) and (c) depicts the Arctic Circle (66.5∘N latitude). Graphic: Rantanen, et al., 2022 / Communications Earth and Environment

August 14, 2022

Arctic warming four times faster than rest of Earth – “Something is happening in the Arctic, and it will affect us all”

PARIS, 11 August 2022 (AFP) – The Arctic has warmed nearly four times faster than the rest of the planet over the last 40 years, according to research published Thursday that suggests climate models are underestimating the rate of polar heating. The United Nations’ climate science panel said in a special report in 2019 that […]

Global map showing the highest marine heatwave (MHW) category experienced at each pixel in 2021 (reference period 1982–2011). Light grey indicates that no MHW occurred in a pixel over the entire year. (b) Stacked bar plot showing the percentage of the surface of the ocean experiencing an MHW on any given day of the year. (c) Stacked bar plot showing the cumulative percentage of the surface of the ocean that experienced an MHW over the year. Note: These values are based on when in the year a pixel first experienced its highest MHW category, so no pixel is counted twice. Horizontal lines in this figure show the final percentages for each category of MHW. (d) Stacked bar plot showing the cumulative number of MHW days averaged over the surface of the ocean. Note: This average is calculated by dividing the cumulative sum of MHW days per pixel weighted by the surface area of those pixels. Data: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature (NOAA OISST). Graphic: Robert Schlegel

May 22, 2022

WMO: Four key climate change indicators broke records in 2021 – Past seven years have been the warmest seven years on record – “A dismal litany of humanity’s failure to tackle climate disruption”

GENEVA, 18 May 2022 (WMO) – Four key climate change indicators – greenhouse gas concentrations, sea level rise, ocean heat and ocean acidification – set new records in 2021. This is yet another clear sign that human activities are causing planetary scale changes on land, in the ocean, and in the atmosphere, with harmful and […]

2m surface temperature over Asia on 30 April 2022. Pakistan temperatures soared up to a scorching 49C (120.2F), one of the hottest temperatures ever recorded on Earth in April. Graphic: Climate Reanalyzer

May 3, 2022

Pakistan and India suffer extreme spring heatwaves – “We are living in hell”

By Hannah Ellis-Petersen and Shah Meer Baloch 2 May 2022 DELHI and ISLAMABAD (The Guardian) – For the past few weeks, Nazeer Ahmed has been living in one of the hottest places on Earth. As a brutal heatwave has swept across India and Pakistan, his home in Turbat, in Pakistan’s Balochistan region, has been suffering […]

Antarctic sea ice extent for 25 February 2022, was 1.92 million square kilometers (741,000 square miles). The orange line shows the 1981 to 2010 average extent for that day. Graphic: National Snow and Ice Data Center

April 3, 2022

WMO: Antarctic heat, rain, and ice prompt concern – “This event is rewriting record books and our expectations about what is possible in Antarctica”

1 April 2022 (WMO) – Record high temperatures, rain and the collapse of an ice shelf in East Antarctica have prompted questions and concern about the possible role of climate change in the coldest and driest part of the world. Record high temperatures, rain and the collapse of an ice shelf in East Antarctica have […]

Satellite view of the Conger/Glenzer (Bowman Island) ice shelf collapse in March 2022. Scientists are concerned because the ice shelf collapsed in East Antarctica, an area that had long been thought to be stable. The collapse in March 2022 was the first time scientists have ever seen an ice shelf collapse in this cold area of Antarctica. Photo: NASA / AP

March 27, 2022

Thinning Antarctic ice shelf finally crumbles after extreme heatwave – “The Glenzer Conger ice shelf presumably had been there for thousands of years, and it’s never going to be there again”

By Isla Binnie 25 March 2022 (Reuters) – An East Antarctica ice shelf disintegrated this month following a period of extreme heat in the region, according to scientists. Satellite images show the 1,200 square-kilometre Conger Ice Shelf collapsed completely on or around March 15. “Possible it hit its tipping point following the #Antarctic #AtmosphericRiver and […]

Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) sea surface temperature (SST) fingerprint. Multimodel mean correlation map between the low-frequency AMOC at 26°N and SST (12). Stars numbered 1 to 16 denote location of sites referred in the figures. The reconstructed AMV at South Sawtooth Lake (1), August temperature in Vøring Plateau off Norway (2), Eastern Fram Strait IRD (3), Atlantic water influence based on C. neoteresis in Western Fram Strait (4), East Greenland Strait N. labradorica (5), North Icelandic shelf temperature based on δ18O from bivalve shells (6), IRD in Denmark Strait (7), the RAPiD-35-COM δ18O T. quinqueloba (8), percentage of Atlantic species in Disko Bugt (9), the RAPID-21-COM sortable silt in the ISOW (10), Gulf of Maine reconstructed SST from bivalve shells (11), titanium (%) in the Cariaco Basin (12), Quelccaya ice record δ18O (13), Huagapo speleothem δ18O (14), and Lake Bosumtwi lake level inferred from δ18O (15). The James Ross Island ice core record with annually resolved δD is shown (16). Graphic: Lapointe and Bradley, 2021 / Science Advances

December 25, 2021

Researchers uncover the surprising cause of the Little Ice Age – “We may be underestimating future ice loss from the Greenland ice sheet”

AMHERST, Massachusetts, 15 December 2021 (University of Massachusetts Amherst) – New research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst provides a novel answer to one of the persistent questions in historical climatology, environmental history and the earth sciences: what caused the Little Ice Age? The answer, we now know, is a paradox: warming. The Little Ice […]

Satellite view of changes to the Sierra Nevada snowpack, 2006-2021. Photo: NASA

December 25, 2021

Sierra Nevada snowpack, a crucial water resource, could disappear in 25 years – “A low-to-no-snow future has massive implications for where and when water is stored in the western U.S.”

By Denise Chow 1 December 2021 (NBC News) – The Sierra Nevada snowpack, a major source of water for California, could largely disappear in 25 years if global warming continues unchecked, according to a recent study. The worrisome findings, published 26 October 2021 in the journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, have serious implications for California’s […]

Desdemona Despair

Tag: glacier