Graph of the Day: Retreat of Jakobshavn Glacier, 1851-2009

Jakobshavn Glacier in western Greenland has been rapidly losing ice from its terminus for more than a decade due to warm water currents reaching up the fjord. The arrow indicates direction of discharge, while the glacier retreats back towards the Greenland Ice Sheet. Another study focused on western Greenland’s Jakobshavn Isbrae responsible for draining 7 […]

NOAA: Warming of the Arctic continues to be widespread and dramatic

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer WASHINGTON — Global warming is messing with the planet’s thermostat. That warning came Thursday from Richard Spinrad, head of research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in releasing the annual update of science’s Arctic report card [pdf]. Warming temperatures continue in the polar north, changing wind patterns, […]

India farmers create artificial glaciers to forestall crop failure

By Ben Arnoldy | The Christian Science Monitor, Oct 22, 2009 Stakmo, India — Chhewang Norphel makes artificial glaciers. The reason: The real ones have rapidly receded up the Himalayan slopes in his home district of Ladakh in northernmost India. Himalayan communities like Ladakh rely on glacial runoff to grow food, making them – along […]

Himalaya glaciers could be gone by 2035

Deep in the Himalayas, the disappearance of glaciers is threatening the kingdom of Bhutan. Anjali Nayar trekked through the mountains to see how the country is adapting to a warming world. By Anjali Nayar …Glaciers in the Himalayas are retreating faster than in any other part of the world and they could disappear completely by […]

Hydropower industry braces for glacier-free future

By Emma Thomasson RHONE GLACIER, Switzerland (Reuters) – Standing on the glacier at the source of the Rhone river, glaciologist Andreas Bauder poses next to a 3-meter high pole sticking out of the ice, and gestures above his head. “This is about the melt of one month,” he says, as fellow scientists drill into the […]

Melting glaciers release pollution from past decades

Alpine glaciers are now releasing nasty chemicals that settled on them decades ago and have since been banned By Jessica Hamzelou Bad hair and shoulder pads are not the only things from the 1980s that we’d rather not see again. Nasty chemicals banned in that decade are also on the list. Unfortunately, melting Alpine glaciers […]

Kashmir's main glacier ‘melting at alarming speed’

SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) – Indian Kashmir’s biggest glacier, which feeds the region’s main river, is melting faster than other Himalayas glaciers, threatening the water supply of tens of thousands of people, a new report warned on Monday. SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) – Indian Kashmir’s biggest glacier, which feeds the region’s main river, is melting faster than […]

Soot clouds melting Himalayan glaciers

Fumes from wood fires and from diesel engines accelerate melting, Indian scientists warn By Randeep Ramesh and Suzanne Goldenberg, The Observer, Sunday 4 October 2009 Glaciers in the Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau that feed the river systems of almost half the world’s people are melting faster because of the effects of clouds of soot […]

The high stakes of melting Himalayan glaciers

By Reenita Malhotra, for CNN (CNN) — The glaciers in the Himalayas are receding quicker than those in other parts of the world and could disappear altogether by 2035 according to the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. The result of this deglaciation could be conflict as Himalayan glacial runoff has an essential […]

Graph of the Day: Rate of Change of Surface Elevation for Antarctica and Greenland, 2003-2007

Change measurements are median filtered (10-km radius), spatially averaged (5-km radius) and gridded to 3 km, from intervals (Dt) of at least 365 d, over the period 2003–2007 (mean Dt is 728 d for Antarctica and 746 d for Greenland). East Antarctic data cropped to 2,500-m altitude. White dashed line (at 81.5° S) shows southern […]

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