Author Archives: Joshua S Hill


About Joshua S Hill

I'm a Christian, a nerd, a geek, a liberal left-winger, and believe that we're pretty quickly directing planet-Earth into hell in a handbasket! I work as Associate Editor for the Important Media Network and write for CleanTechnica and Planetsave. I also write for Fantasy Book Review (.co.uk), Amazing Stories, the Stabley Times and Medium.   I love words with a passion, both creating them and reading them.

Glaciers Contributing Same As Ice Sheet Melt To Sea Level Rise

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Melt from Alaska's Columbia Glacier and other glaciers around the world contributed as much to global sea rise as the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets combined from 2003 and 2009. Image Credit: Tad Pfeffer, University of Colorado

Research has found that approximately 99% of our planet’s land-locked ice is held up in the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. The remainder, however, is out in the open, located primarily in the glaciers dotted throughout the appropriate latitudes across the planet. And according to new research, those glaciers contributed approximately the same amount of water to sea level rise as the two ice sheets combined between 2003 and 2009. All glacial regions lost ice … Read More

Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets More Stable Than Previously Thought

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CVX - Canvas™ : ScienceFig3Revised.cvx

Scientific understanding is continually shifting as time moves on. For decades now, scientists have assumed that ancient high tide lines referred to higher sea levels. These assumptions have led scientists to believe that if the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets were to completely melt, they would cause such a high sea level again. New research, however, has challenged these assumptions, by showing that the Earth’s hot mantle pushed up segments of ancient shorelines over millions … Read More

Greater Risk of Earthquake and Tsunami in Western Indian Ocean

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Image Credit: National Oceanography Centre Southampton

On Boxing Day of 2004 magnitude 9.1 undersea megathrust earthquake off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, sparked a tsunami that took the lives of over 280,000 thousand people. The quake was caused when the Indian tectonic plate subducted underneath the Burma Plate, causing 1,600 kilometres of fault surface slippage in two phases over a period of several minutes. New research carried out by scientists from the University of Southampton based at the National Oceanography Centre … Read More

NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory Sees 400ppm Carbon Dioxide Levels

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NOAA's Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. Thursday, levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa surpassed 400 parts per million for the first time since measurements began in 1958. Pre-industrial carbon dioxide levels were 280 parts per million. Mauna Kea is in the background. Image Credit: NOAA

Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations have been closely monitored for some time now. Just last month it was predicted that if we did not break through the 400 parts per million (ppm) barrier this May, it would happen next year, according to the longest continuous record of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. On May 9, true to form, the daily mean concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels passed 400 ppm at Mauna Loa according to independent … Read More

Climate Change to Cause Drastic Decline in Common Plant and Animal Numbers

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Amphibians like Kermit are at particular risk.

A new study paints a dire picture of the coming decades, showing that more than half of the common species of plant found across the planet and one third of common animal species could see a dramatic population decline if something is not done to halt global warming soon. “While there has been much research on the effect of climate change on rare and endangered species, little has been known about how an increase in … Read More

Loss of Winter Snow Cover Bad News for Plants and Animals

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Image Credit: Tunnels Voles via Flickr CC

Remember those David Attenborough documentaries that showed you underneath the snow cover into the world below, home to all manner of creatures and plant life trying to survive through the harsh white winter? Well that same ecosystem — the subnivium — is set to suffer at the hands of a warming climate, according to scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Winter and spring snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere is declining year by year, by … Read More

More Hurricanes Expected Over Hawaii By End Of Century

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This image shows the projected change in number of tropical cyclones per year by the last quarter of this century. The green stippling indicates statistical significance at the 99 percent confidence level. Image Credit: Hiroyuki Murakami, Nature Climate Change

Hawaii does not have to suffer the impact of hurricanes often — with only two making landfall in the past 30 years — however this may be set to change in a warming world, according to new research headed by a team of scientists at the International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa. Hawaii is just a bit too far along the Pacific hurricane path to be greatly affected by the massive storms, as … Read More

Understanding Earth’s Early Mantle

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Understanding the geologic history of Earth will no doubt be a decades, if not centuries long process, as we gather more and more data and expand our knowledge. New research published in the April 25 issue of the journal Nature has contributed an interesting new data point, however, shining a light on the processes involved in tectonic subduction. An international team of researchers led by scientists from Boston University’s Department of Earth and Environment have found … Read More

Six-Foot Robot Invades Greenland, For Science

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GROVER Rover

There is nothing better in life than a good robot story, and what’s even better is when that robot is named GROVER. GROVER stands for both Greenland Rover and Goddard Remotely Operated Vehicle for Exploration and Research — which must have just really made the NASA scientists day, when they realised — and is set to test itself on the highest part of Greenland’s massive ice sheet between May 3 and June 8. The autonomous, solar-powered, … Read More

Hawaiian Islands Should Expect Less And Less Rainfall

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Image Credit: Tom Burke via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)

The University of Hawaiʻi has been paying close attention to Hawaiian rainfall patterns of late, and a new study has supported previous research, confirming that rainfall over the Hawaiian Islands has been declining since 1978, a trend that they believe will continue through the end of this century thanks in part to the changes resulting from global warming. “For water resource and ecosystem management, and for other societal needs, we need to know whether this drying trend … Read More