Deny this: Himalaya glaciers really are melting, and doing so at a rapid pace – Kind of like climate change

By David Biello, Scientific American27 July 2012 Remember when climate change contrarians professed outrage over a few errors in the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s last report? One of their favorite such mistakes involved an overestimation of the pace at which glaciers would melt at the “Third Pole,” where the Indian subcontinent crashes into […]

Video: Meltwater from Greenland glacier wipes out key crossing

By Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent, www.guardian.co.uk25 July 2012 The gust of warm air that caused the unprecedented thaw in Greenland’s surface ice also appears to have caused unusually high runoff from a glacier, wiping out a crossing near a key research and transport hub. Scientists who fly in Kangerlussuaq, near the western edge of […]

Greenland ice sheet melted at unprecedented rate during July 2012

By Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent, www.guardian.co.uk24 July 2012 The Greenland ice sheet melted at a faster rate this month than at any other time in recorded history, with virtually the entire ice sheet showing signs of thaw. The rapid melting over just four days was captured by three satellites. It has stunned and alarmed […]

Graph of the Day: Greenland Reflectivity Anomaly, June 2012

Satellite data of Greenland reflectivity 1-22 June 2012 versus the same periods in previous Junes back to 2000. The blue colors indicate a decrease in reflectivity compared to previous Junes. In a new study, Box and a team of researchers describe the decline in ice sheet reflectivity and the reasons behind it, noting that if […]

Greenland ice sheet melt nears critical tipping point ‘into a state of inevitable decline’

By Andrew Freedman29 June 2012 The Greenland ice sheet is poised for another record melt this year, and is approaching a “tipping point” into a new and more dangerous melt regime in which the summer melt area covers the entire land mass, according to new findings from polar researchers. The ice sheet is the focus […]

Past periodic warmth in Arctic may be related to melting Antarctic ice sheets

Contact: Janet Lathrop, 413-545-044421 June 2012 AMHERST, Massachusetts – First analyses of the longest sediment core ever collected on land in the terrestrial Arctic, published this week in Science, provide documentation that intense warm intervals, warmer than scientists thought possible, occurred there over the past 2.8 million years. (“2.8 Million Years of Arctic Climate Change […]

The Economist: The melting north

By James Astill16 June 2012 STANDING ON THE Greenland ice cap, it is obvious why restless modern man so reveres wild places. Everywhere you look, ice draws the eye, squeezed and chiselled by a unique coincidence of forces. Gormenghastian ice ridges, silver and lapis blue, ice mounds and other frozen contortions are minutely observable in […]

Graph of the Day: Outlet Glacier Accelerations in Greenland, 2000-2010

Outlet glacier categories and rates of velocity change (percentage change from beginning of 5-year period). Black-outlined images show 2000 to 2005 results, and red-outlined images are 2005 to 2010 results. The background velocity map for both periods is a 2007 to 2010 composite, with the five ice-sheet regions indicated: north (N), northwest (NW), southwest (SW), […]

Antarctic octopus tells story of ice-sheet collapse

By Tamera Jones4 May 2012 Scientists have long been concerned that the massive West Antarctic Ice Sheet could collapse if global temperatures keep climbing. If it did, sea levels are predicted to rise by as much as five metres. Now, genetic evidence from an Antarctic octopus reveals that this may have happened at some point […]

Greenland deglaciation slower than worst-case scenarios, ‘but the glaciers are speeding up and we see no sign of that stopping’

By Damian Carrington, www.guardian.co.uk 3 May 2012 Sea-level rises are unlikely to be as high as worst-case scenarios have forecasted, suggests new research which shows that Greenland‘s glaciers are slipping into the sea more slowly than was previously thought. But the scientists warned that ice loss still sped up by 30% and is driving rises […]

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