World leaders “have moral obligation to act” after UN climate report

ByJonathan Watts and Matthew Taylor 8 October 2018 (The Guardian) – World leaders have been told they have moral obligation to ramp up their action on the climate crisis in the wake of a new UN report that shows even half a degree of extra warming will affect hundreds of millions of people, decimate corals, […]

Planet at risk of heading toward “Hothouse Earth” state – “Places on Earth will become uninhabitable”

6 August 2018 (Stockholm Resilience Centre) – An international team of scientists has published a study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) showing that even if the carbon emission reductions called for in the Paris Agreement are met, there is a risk of Earth entering what the scientists call “Hothouse Earth” conditions.A […]

Study finds hundreds of thousands of U.S. homes at risk of chronic flooding due to sea level rise over the coming decades – “By 2100, there’s a 98–100 percent chance that we get 6 inches of sea level rise. It’s virtually guaranteed.”

(UCS) – Sea levels are rising. Tides are inching higher. High-tide floods are becoming more frequent and reaching farther inland. And hundreds of US coastal communities will soon face chronic, disruptive flooding that directly affects people’s homes, lives, and properties. Yet property values in most coastal real estate markets do not currently reflect this risk. […]

Warmer ocean water destabilizing Antarctica ice shelves from below also causing massive vertical cracks – “There are dual processes going on here: One that is destabilizing from below, and another from above.”

13 June 2018 (University of Waterloo) – A new study from the University of Waterloo discovered that rising sea levels could be accelerated by vulnerable ice shelves in the Antarctic. The study, by an international team of polar scientists led by Canada Research Chair Christine Dow of Waterloo’s Faculty of Environment, discovered that the process […]

Antarctica ice melt increased by more than five times since 1997-2002 period – “The detailed record shows an acceleration, starting around 2002”

By Chris Mooney 13 June 2018 (The Washington Post) – Antarctica’s ice sheet is melting at a rapidly increasing rate, now pouring more than 200 billion tons of ice into the ocean annually and raising sea levels a half-millimeter every year, a team of 80 scientists reported Wednesday. The melt rate has tripled in the […]

Antarctica ice-sheet melt increased sharply in 2012 – “The continent is causing sea levels to rise faster today than at any time in the past 25 years”

13 June 2018 (University of Leeds) – Ice losses from Antarctica have increased global sea levels by 7.6 mm since 1992, with two fifths of this rise (3 mm) coming in the last five years alone.The findings are from a major climate assessment known as the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-comparison Exercise (IMBIE), and are […]

Atlantic circulation that helps warm Europe is at its weakest for more than 1500 years

12 April 2018 (UCL News) – In the first comprehensive study of ocean-based records, published in Nature, scientists have observed a marked weakening of Atlantic circulation over the past 150 years. This weakening correlates with the end of the Little Ice Age, around 1850 AD, and the onset of the industrial revolution when glaciers and […]

These are the melting glaciers that might someday drown your city, according to NASA

By Chris Mooney 15 November 2017 (The Washington Post) – New York City has plenty to worry about from sea level rise. But according to a new study by NASA researchers, it should worry specifically about two major glacier systems in Greenland’s northeast and northwest — but not so much about other parts of the […]

300 million years ago, the formation of coal almost turned Earth into a snowball – “By burning the coal, the CO2 is again destabilizing the Earth system”

10 October 2017 (PIK) – While burning coal today causes Earth to overheat, about 300 million years ago the formation of that same coal brought our planet close to global glaciation. For the first time, scientists show the massive effect in a study published in the renowned Proceedings of the US Academy of Sciences. When […]

Greenland fires ignite global warming fears – “Fire itself will add to the problem and accelerate thawing of permafrost”

By JoAnna Wendel 11 August 2017 (Eos) – In a real clash of fire and ice, a massive wildfire in southern Greenland has captured the world’s attention.At the end of July, a couple of NASA satellites detected hot spots in Greenland that indicated fire, said Mark Ruminski, a team leader for a hazard mapping system […]

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial