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 […]

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 […]

Greenland ice sheet melting six times faster than in the 1980s – “It is a bit scary to see how fast it is changing”

By Rafi Letzter 23 April 2019 (Live Science) – Greenland’s ice sheet is melting six times faster than it was in the 1980s. And all that meltwater is directly raising sea levels. That’s all according to a new study, published yesterday (22 April 2019) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that […]

First successful model simulation of the past 3 million years of climate change – “Our results imply a strong sensitivity of the Earth system to relatively small variations in atmospheric CO2”

By Matteo Willeit 3 April 2019 (RealClimate) – A new study published in Science Advances shows that the main features of natural climate variability over the last 3 million years can be reproduced with an efficient model of the Earth system. The Quaternary is the most recent geological Period, covering the past ~2.6 million years. It is defined […]

Melting glaciers expose bodies of dead climbers on Mount Everest

By Navin Singh Khadka 21 March 2019 (BBC News) – Expedition operators are concerned at the number of climbers’ bodies that are becoming exposed on Mount Everest as its glaciers melt. Nearly 300 mountaineers have died on the peak since the first ascent attempt and two-thirds of bodies are thought still to be buried in […]

Antarctica losing six times more ice mass annually now than 40 years ago – “We expect multi-meter sea level rise from Antarctica in the coming centuries”

IRVINE, California, 14 January 2019 (UCI) – Antarctica experienced a sixfold increase in yearly ice mass loss between 1979 and 2017, according to a study published today in  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Glaciologists from the University of California, Irvine, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Netherlands’ Utrecht University additionally found that the […]

Methane release from beneath Greenland’s melting ice sheet rivals major world rivers

By Lauren C. Andrews2 January 2019 (Nature) – Sediments beneath glaciers and ice sheets harbour carbon reserves that, under certain conditions, can be converted to methane, a potent greenhouse gas. However, the formation and release of such methane is an unquantified component of the Arctic methane budget. Writing in Nature, Lamarche-Gagnon et al.1 present direct […]

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