Land surface temperature over Europe, 25 July 2019, measured by the Copernicus Sentinel3 satellite. Graphic: ESA

WMO: July 2019 equaled or surpassed hottest month globally – World is on track for the 2015-2019 period “to be the five hottest years on record”

1 August 2019 (WMO) – According to the new data from the World Meteorological Organization and Copernicus Climate Change Programme, July 2019 at least equalled, if not surpassed, the hottest month in recorded history. This follows the warmest ever June on record. The data from the Copernicus Climate Change Programme, run by the European Centre […]

A woman walks past a window reflecting a thermometer showing a temperature of 41 degrees Celsius on 25 July 2019, in Paris, as a new heatwave hits the French capital. Photo: Dominique Faget / AFP / Getty Images

All-time heat records melt in Europe – Paris warmer than Singapore at 42.6°C (108.7°F) – National records broken on Wednesday fell again on Thursday – “‘If you’d have said five years ago we’d see temperature records fall this frequently, I wouldn’t have believed you”

By William Wilkes and Megan Durisin 24 July 2019 (Bloomberg) – Europe’s latest summer heatwave broke heat records just weeks after the continent had its hottest ever June, fueling concern that a shifting climate is triggering more extreme weather. Germany probably set a new all-time temperature record of 42.6 degrees Celsius (108.7 Fahrenheit) in the […]

Stability diagram of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), rate R versus duration T of mass addition with unstable regime in red and stable regime in blue. Interpolation of the field is based on the conducted ensemble of stabilization experiments (gray circles). The critical threshold Rc (white curve) of stabilization is approximated by function given at the top right corner. White stars highlight simulations that share the same total amount of deposited mass (M = 8000 Gt), added at differing rate and duration, showing that the combination of both determines potential stabilization. Graphic: Feldmann, et al., 2019 / Science Advances

Adding 8 trillion tons of artificial snow to the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could stop it from collapsing – “The fundamental trade-off is whether we as humanity want to sacrifice Antarctica to save the currently inhabited coastal regions”

By Katherine J. Wu 17 July 2019 (PBS) – Gird your loins, humans: The time has come to turn part of the South Pole into our own giant snow globe. Or has it? In a study published today in the journal Science Advances, a team of German researchers suggests that dumping 8 trillion tons of artificial snow onto […]

A woman wearing a bikini lies on the ice of the Buluus glacier in the Yakutia region of Siberia in summer 2019. Photo: The Siberian Times

Residents of Yakutsk, the world’s coldest city, escape 32°C heatwave by chilling on Siberian glacier

14 July 2019 (The Siberian Times) – Today it’s +32°C (89.6°F) in Yakutsk, the world’s coldest city, and locals escape heatwave like true Siberians – by chilling on ice. Today the Buluus glacier is as packed with visitors as the only official beach in Yakutsk, the world’s largest city built on permafrost. A hidden gem […]

https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2019/06/19/melting-himalayan-glaciers-doubled/

Melting of Himalaya glaciers has doubled in recent years

By Kevin Krajick 19 June 2019 (Columbia University) – A newly comprehensive study shows that melting of Himalayan glaciers caused by rising temperatures has accelerated dramatically since the start of the 21st century. The analysis, spanning 40 years of satellite observations across India, China, Nepal and Bhutan, indicates that glaciers have been losing the equivalent of more than […]

Ice extent for selected glaciers in Glacier National Park in 1966 and 2015. Graphic: The New York Times

Glacier National Park’s name will outlive its glaciers – “It’s just kind of sad to see”

By Doug Struck 18 June 2019 GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, MONTANA (The Christian Science Monitor) – Maria Clemens took time off from her post-college summer job on a Montana ranch to hike into this national park to see a glacier. “I don’t like it,” she pronounced on the trail as she returned. “It’s just kind of […]

Global sea level rise with the Thwaites Glacier and the ice of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Graphic: PRI

Scientists race against time to find out if Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier is doomed – “This is where rapid change is really happening, and we’re actually standing and looking at the bit that’s rapidly changing”

By Carolyn Beeler 13 May 2019 (PRI) – Peter Sheehan, an oceanographer on the Nathaniel B. Palmer, was one of the first people on Earth to get this view of Thwaites Glacier — the part that juts out to sea. He’s pored over plenty of Google images of ice shelves, but there’s nothing like the […]

Sea level rise could displace millions of people within two generations

By Jonathan Bamber and Michael Oppenheimer 20 May 2019 (The Conversation) – Antarctica is further from civilisation than any other place on Earth. The Greenland ice sheet is closer to home but around one tenth the size of its southern sibling. Together, these two ice masses hold enough frozen water to raise global mean sea […]

A quarter of West Antarctic ice is now unstable – “A wave of thinning has spread rapidly across some of Antarctica’s most vulnerable glaciers, and their losses are driving up sea levels around the planet”

A quarter of West Antarctic ice is now unstable – “A wave of thinning has spread rapidly across some of Antarctica’s most vulnerable glaciers, and their losses are driving up sea levels around the planet”

16 May 2019 (University of Leeds) – In only 25 years, ocean melting has caused ice thinning to spread across West Antarctica so rapidly that 24 percent of its glacier ice is now affected, according to a new study. By combining 25 years of European Space Agency satellite altimeter measurements and a model of the […]

North Atlantic Ocean phytoplankton decline coincides with warming temperatures over the last 150 years – “10 percent of the marine food base in this region has been lost over the industrial era”

North Atlantic Ocean phytoplankton decline coincides with warming temperatures over the last 150 years – “10 percent of the marine food base in this region has been lost over the industrial era”

By Jennifer Chu 6 May 2019 (MIT News) – Virtually all marine life depends on the productivity of phytoplankton — microscopic organisms that work tirelessly at the ocean’s surface to absorb the carbon dioxide that gets dissolved into the upper ocean from the atmosphere. Through photosynthesis, these microbes break down carbon dioxide into oxygen, some […]

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