NASA discovers a new mode of ice loss in Greenland – “Intense melting such as we saw in 2010 and 2012 is without precedent”

By Carol Rasmussen 25 May 2017(JPL) – A new NASA study finds that during Greenland’s hottest summers on record, 2010 and 2012, the ice in Rink Glacier on the island’s west coast didn’t just melt faster than usual, it slid through the glacier’s interior in a gigantic wave, like a warmed freezer pop sliding out […]

Water is streaming across Antarctica – New survey finds liquid flow more widespread than thought

19 April 2017 (Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory) – In the first such continent-wide survey, scientists have found extensive drainages of meltwater flowing over parts of Antarctica’s ice during the brief summer. Researchers already knew such features existed, but assumed they were confined mainly to Antarctica’s fastest-warming, most northerly reaches. Many of the newly mapped drainages are […]

In Greenland’s northernmost village, a melting Arctic threatens the age-old hunt

By Chris Mooney 29 April 2017 (The Washington Post) – The northernmost village in Greenland sits just shy of 78 degrees north latitude — deep in the Arctic — yet during the summer, meltwater is everywhere. It flows in small rivulets and larger streams, past multicolored houses built against a sloping hill and down to […]

The Arctic Ocean has become a garbage trap for 300 billion pieces of plastic – “Most of the plastic that we have disposed in the ocean is still now in transit to the Arctic”

By Chris Mooney 19 April 2017 (The Washington Post) – Drifts of floating plastic that humans have dumped into the world’s oceans are flowing into the pristine waters of the Arctic as a result of a powerful system of currents that deposits waste in the icy seas east of Greenland and north of Scandinavia. In […]

Global warming could destroy far more Arctic permafrost than we thought – “The current pattern of permafrost reveals the sensitivity of permafrost to global warming”

By Chelsea Harvey 10 April 2017 (The Washington Post) – Climate change could cause another 4 million square kilometers, or about 1.5 million square miles, of permafrost to disappear with every additional degree Celsius, or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, of warming, a new study suggests. The estimate, which was published Monday in the journal Nature Climate […]

Scientists just uncovered some troubling news about Greenland’s most enormous glacier

By Chris Mooney 11 April 2017 (The Washington Post) – The largest glacier in Greenland is even more vulnerable to sustained ice losses than previously thought, scientists have reported. Jakobshavn glacier, responsible for feeding flotillas of icebergs into the Ilulissat icefjord — and possibly for unleashing the iceberg that sank the Titanic — is an […]

These stunning timelapse photos may just convince you global warming is real

By Chelsea Harvey 3 April 2017 (Washington Post) – Melting glaciers, from Greenland to Antarctica, have become symbols of global warming — and monitoring their retreat is one major way scientists are keeping tabs on the progress of climate change. Now, scientists are trying to bring the issue a little closer to home by using […]

These NASA satellite images show stunning toll of global warming

By Joe McCarthy5 January 2017 (Global Citizen) – Climate change rarely transforms an environment overnight. By the time ice shelves disappear, ocean waves creep onto main streets, and forests shrivel, the forces of climate change have been at work for decades. Fortunately, NASA is tracking these environmental changes with satellites so that the public knows […]

The underestimated danger of a breakdown of the Gulf Stream System

By Stefan Rahmstorf4 January 2017 (RealClimate) – A new model simulation of the Gulf Stream System shows a breakdown of the gigantic overturning circulating in the Atlantic after a CO2 doubling. A new study in Science Advances by Wei Liu and colleagues at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego and the University of […]

The maddening, uncertain reality of sea-level rise – ‘This actually makes preparation more difficult’

By Brad Plumer 16 December 2016 (Vox) – By far one of the most important impacts of global warming in the coming decades will be sea-level rise. As the Earth heats up and ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica melt, ocean levels will creep upward, flooding coastal cities and forcing large-scale relocations around the world. […]

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