Shrinking Sagar Island struggles to stay afloat as sea level rises – “We have made nature very angry”

By Soumya Sarkar8 March 2017 (The Third Pole) – “The water rushed in at night,” recalls Madan Mohan Pal of Hendalketki in Sagar Island. “By the morning, the entire village was under water. When the flood receded, the land was so saline that we could grow nothing for the next two years.” Although Pal has […]

A huge Antarctic glacier just lost another chunk of ice — and we know because of NASA

By Chelsea Harvey 22 February 2017 (The Washington Post) – One of Antarctica’s most rapidly melting glaciers has shed yet another large block of ice in an event that NASA scientists say is “further evidence of the ice shelf’s fragility.” The agency drew attention to the incident in a tweet Wednesday morning.  Pine Island Glacier, […]

Video: Flyover of Larsen C Ice Shelf crack, February 2017

21 February 2017 (British Antarctic Survey) – Currently a huge iceberg, roughly the size of Norfolk, looks set to break off Larsen C Ice Shelf, which is more than twice the size of Wales. Satellite observations from February 2017 show the growing crack in the ice shelf which suggests that an iceberg with an area […]

US Antarctic expert Eric Rignot on climate science in the age of Trump – “There’s a lot at stake here”

By Veronika Meduna 14 February 2017 (The Spinoff) – US-based glaciologist Eric Rignot is in New Zealand this week to talk about polar ice sheets and their potential to add to predicted sea level rise. He tells Veronika Meduna that it’s more important than ever to discuss climate science and what it’s like to be […]

Canada glaciers now major contributor to sea level rise – Nine times more ice is melting annually due to warmer temperatures

Irvine, California, 14 February 2017 (University of California, Irvine) – Ice loss from Canada’s Arctic glaciers has transformed them into a major contributor to sea level change, new research by University of California, Irvine glaciologists has found. From 2005 to 2015, surface melt off ice caps and glaciers of the Queen Elizabeth Islands grew by […]

Florida’s Coastal Everglades, deprived of fresh water, near unhealthy “tipping point”

By Jenny Staletovich13 February 2017 SHARK RIVER (Miami Herald) – At the bottom of the Everglades along the mouth of the Shark River, a towering mangrove forest stands in a place few people outside anglers and researchers ever see: at the edge of a vast shallow bay where the salty sea and freshwater marshes conspired […]

Industrialised societies driving climate change 170 times faster than the natural rate – New paper formalises mathematically the change rate of Earth’s life support system

10 February 2017 (Stockholm Resilience Centre) – A paper recently published in the journal The Anthropocene Review puts the current rate of change of Earth’s life support system in the context of the last 4-billion-year evolution of the biosphere. The paper, which is written by the centre’s Owen Gaffney and senior research fellow Will Steffen, […]

Antarctic ice shelf rift grew 17 miles in the last two months

By Jugal K. Patel7 February 2017 (The New York Times) – A rapidly advancing crack in Antarctica’s fourth-largest ice shelf has scientists concerned that it is getting close to a full break. The rift has accelerated this year in an area already vulnerable to warming temperatures. Since December, the crack has grown by the length […]

Massive iceberg set to break off Antarctic ice shelf – “We are watching with bated breath”

By Doyle Rice2 February 2017 (USA TODAY) – It’s the crack that’s captivating the world. A 110-mile-long rift in an Antarctic ice shelf promises to eventually shear off and create a massive iceberg larger than Rhode Island. For now, it’s fascinating scientists, gamblers and the public worldwide. Everyone wants to know when part of the […]

Short-lived greenhouse gases cause centuries of sea-level rise

By Jennifer Chu9 January 2017 (MIT News) – Even if there comes a day when the world completely stops emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, coastal regions and island nations will continue to experience rising sea levels for centuries afterward, according to a new study by researchers at MIT and Simon Fraser University. In a […]

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