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17 June 2020
Vulnerable carbon stores twice as high where permafrost subsidence is factored in, new research finds
Sinking terrain caused by the loss of ice and soil mass in permafrost is causing deeper thaw than previously thought and making vulnerable twice as much carbon as estimates that don’t account for this shifting ground.
10 March 2020
Major Greenland glacier collapse 90 years ago linked to climate change
Ninety years ago there were no satellites to detect changes in Greenland’s coastal glaciers, but a new study combining historical photos with evidence from ocean sediments suggests climate change was already at work in the 1930s and led to a major collapse of the one of Greenland’s largest coastal glaciers.
5 December 2019
Can Arctic ‘ice management’ combat climate change?
Both sea ice retreat and global warming could be slowed by millions of wind-powered pumps, drifting in the sea ice, to promote ice formation during the Arctic winter. Researchers have now, for the first time, tested the concept using a complex climate model.
15 October 2019
Radioactive chlorine from nuclear bomb tests still present in Antarctica
Antarctica’s ice sheets are still releasing radioactive chlorine from marine nuclear weapons tests in the 1950s, a new study finds. This suggests regions in Antarctica store and vent the radioactive element differently than previously thought. The results also improve scientists’ ability to use chlorine to learn more about Earth’s atmosphere.
14 August 2019
Unprecedented 2018 Bering Sea ice loss repeated in 2019
Sea ice in the Bering Sea reached record-low levels during winter 2018, thanks to persistent warm southerly winds. These conditions caused the ice to retreat to the northern reaches of the 800,000 square mile body of water. By the end of April 2018, sea ice was about 10 percent of normal. And then, much to scientists’ surprise, 2019 just missed eclipsing the record set in 2018.
6 February 2019
Cracks herald the calving of a large iceberg from Petermann Glacier
Cracks in the floating ice tongue of Petermann Glacier in the far northwest reaches of Greenland indicate the pending loss of another large iceberg. Glaciologists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven, Germany report in a new study that the glacier’s flow rate has increased by an average of 10 percent since the calving event in 2012, during which time new cracks have also formed – a quite natural process.
18 December 2018
New satellite tech offers a more detailed map of moving Antarctic glaciers
Scientists can now measure ice flow in Antarctica in far more detail, thanks to the help of a new satellite technology. Using a novel satellite technique called interferometric synthetic aperture radar, or InSAR, scientists can measure the direction of slow ice movement with extreme levels of precision. Slow ice movement is defined as a shift of 1 to 30 meters (3 to 98 feet) per year.
10 May 2018
Sounds of melting glaciers could reveal how fast they shrink
Scientists could potentially use the racket made by melting glaciers to estimate how fast they are disappearing, according to new study of audio recordings captured in the waters of an Arctic fjord. New underwater recordings taken from Hornsund fjord in Svalbard, Norway, show melting icebergs make more noise the faster they melt. The recordings also distinguish melting sounds from grounded glaciers and floating icebergs.
13 March 2018
How much snow accumulates in North America each year? More than scientists thought
There’s a lot more snow piling up in the mountains of North America than anyone knew, according to a first-of-its-kind study. Scientists have revised an estimate of snow volume for the entire continent, and they’ve discovered that snow accumulation in a typical year is 50 percent higher than previously thought.
6 March 2018
Ice-age echoes affect present-day sea level
A new study has, for the first time, cut a clear path through a nettlesome problem: accurately measuring a powerful effect on global sea level that lingers from the last ice age. Just how quickly Earth’s deep, rocky mantle is rebounding from the heavy burden of ancient ice sheets and oceans remains somewhat uncertain. But this rebound effect, known as glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA), is critical to properly understanding the causes of sea level change.
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