By David Biello 12 October 2012 NEW YORK CITY (Scientific American) – The state of the planet is grim, whether that assessment is undertaken from the perspective of economic development, social justice or the global environment. What’s known as sustainable development—a bid to capture all three of those efforts in one effort and phrase—has hardly […]
By Steve Pomplun 21 September 2012 Ice covering the Arctic Ocean melted to the smallest areal extent ever recorded this year, falling to 1.3 million square miles at its lowest point on Sept. 16, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. That’s less than half of the normal area covered by ice at […]
19 September 2012 (NSIDC) – On 16 September 2012, sea ice extent dropped to 3.41 million square kilometers (1.32 million square miles). This appears to have been the lowest extent of the year. In response to the setting sun and falling temperatures, ice extent will now climb through autumn and winter. However, a shift in […]
By Stephen Leahy, www.guardian.co.uk14 September 2012 Uxbridge, Canada – The record loss of Arctic sea ice this summer may mean a cold winter for the UK and northern Europe. The region has been prone to bad winters after summers with very low sea ice, such as 2011 and 2007, said Jennifer Francis, a researcher at […]
By Natalie Wolchover19 September 2012 Distracting from the news that Arctic sea-ice extent reached a record low on 16 September 2012 is a widely circulating blog article claiming that at the opposite end of the Earth, Antarctic sea ice is more than making up for the losses. In the post, climate change skeptic and blogger […]
By John Vidal, Arctic Sunrise, www.guardian.co.uk17 September 2012 One of the world’s leading ice experts has predicted the final collapse of Arctic sea ice in summer months within four years. In what he calls a “global disaster” now unfolding in northern latitudes as the sea area that freezes and melts each year shrinks to its […]
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy [Desdemona finds it very hard to watch the last of Earth’s charismatic megafauna suffer as they become extinct.] By Miguel Llanos, NBC News13 September 2012 Wildlife biologist Ian Bullock is a seasoned visitor to the Arctic, but even he was surprised by what […]
By John Vidal and Adam Vaughan, www.guardian.co.uk14 September 2012 Sea ice in the Arctic has shrunk to its smallest extent ever recorded, smashing the previous record minimum and prompting warnings of accelerated climate change. Satellite images show that the rapid summer melt has reduced the area of frozen sea to less than 3.5 million square […]
By Michael D. Lemonick 11 September 2012 The official end of the Arctic Ocean melt season could come any time now, but the sea ice that covers the North Polar region has already smashed the previous record low for end-of-summer ice area set in 2007. Back then, a combination of warm temperatures and ice-dispersing winds […]
By Tim Lister8 September 2012 (CNN) – Hurricane Isaac may have inundated the parishes of Louisiana, but for thousands of American farmers, it was a blessing, a reprieve from the most torrid summer on record. In much of North America, July was the hottest month since such a record was first taken. Crop yields have […]