Reprinted from our sister publication, CleanTechnica. Not upstaging, but as an important adjunct to the UN’s ADP negotiations that started today in Bonn, Germany, the one-day Conference on Global Leadership in the Arctic: Cooperation, Innovation, Engagement and Resilience took place in Anchorage, Alaska. Otherwise known as the GLACIER summit, the talks proceeded on two parallel
Remember the difference between weather and climate? We know what happens when the weather changes—it’s obvious. Climate is another story. Read on. When it rains, you put on a raincoat or take your umbrella when you go out. It snows: time for high boots, a heavier coat, scarf, and warm gloves. And sunny days, well,
Message from the past found under an Arctic cairn. (Photo from Denis Sarrazin, CEN/ArcticNet.) In 1959, an astute 27-year-old geologist from Ohio State named Paul Walker left a message in a bottle near the foot of an Arctic glacier. At the time, he was living in temperatures that average -18 C., 500 miles (800 km)
The National Science Foundation recently noted that the researchers working on the Pine Island Glacier project are one of three Antarctic science initiatives that have achieved technological milestones with innovative approaches to drilling. Specifically, in an attempt to map the cavity beneath the 37 mile long Pine Island Glacier ice shelf, Penn State graduate student
Glaciologist William Pfeffer from the University of Colorado Boulder has been taking photos of the Columbia Glacier in Prince William Sound on Alaska’s south central Pacific coast since 2004 and has created a time-lapse video that documents the glacier’s rapid retreat and subsequent ice discharge. The video shows large chunks splitting off from the glacier
Information regarding the health and fate of glaciers across the planet is rare and often misunderstood, causing some experts to make claims that bear no weight in fact. Now, an international team of scientists is planning a long-term campaign to monitor 25 glaciers in Tibet. The region contains some 46,000 glaciers and has been dubbed
A new study which represents the most extensive study of the evolution of floating ice shelves in the eastern Amundsen Sea Embayment in West Antarctica has revealed that the ice is steadily losing their grip on adjacent bay walls, a problem which scientists believe may hasten the loss of ice to the sea.
A portion of the Perito Moreno glacier in Argentina’s Patagonia has calved away in a display not seen since 2008, but now only seen by a handful of park-rangers.
Glaciers across the planet are shrinking at a remarkable rate, a rate that is expected to increase as the years continue to pass by. However, conversely, water runoff from glaciers will not continue to increase, and is in fact expected to decrease over the coming decades. The new research is courtesy of research done in
In a release featuring scientific findings concerning the activity of glaciers across the planet during 2008 and 09, the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) released it’s Glacier Mass Balance Bulletin 08/09 which includes confirmation of 2009 news reports that the Bolivian glacier Chacaltaya has indeed melted away. As many global warming skeptics will be pleased
A team of scientists have set forth from BAS Rothera Research Station on the Antarctic Peninsula and are heading for Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica where they will survey the world’s largest glacier in an effort to understand how ice is being lost from the glacier and what contribution the loss is likely to
Using data gathered from 111 weather stations across southwest China, researchers have shown that increasing annual temperatures are devastating glaciers across the region and are statistically significant in terms of a warming trend. The research – which was conducted by scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and published in the October 25 edition of
According to geologists at the University at Buffalo, marine-calving glaciers have the ability to not only shrink rapidly during periods of global warming, but to grow as quickly during periods of global cooling.
Images taken by the European Space Agency’s ERS-2 satellite days before it was retired have revealed the rapid changes happening to Greenland’s glaciers.
Two of Greenland’s largest three glaciers have lost enough ice that they could have filled Lake Erie with the accumulated melted ice water.
A group of the world’s leading climate and glacier scientists have issued a report which was commissioned by the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences, citing the scientific issues causing glaciers to melt and the moral imperative they believe society has to properly address climate change.
This image was captured on August 31, 2000 and depicts the Malaspina Glacier, the largest glacier in Alaska.
Operation IceBridge is in its third year of annual campaigns in the Arctic and Antarctic, monitoring glaciers, ice sheets and sea ice. These images were taken on April 11, 2011, with the clear weather finally allowing these beautiful photos to be taken.
Glaciers are contributing more and more to the increasing sea level rise, according to a new study which looked at 270 of the largest outlet glaciers of the South and North Patagonian Icefields of South America.
New research out of the University of California, Berkeley and the Berkeley Geochronology Center (BGC) has allowed scientists to reconstruct what the land looked like before it was scoured and carved up by glaciers.
“People always thought the circulation [in Greenland’s fjords] would be simple: warm waters coming into the fjords at depth, melting the glaciers. Then the mixture of warm water and meltwater rises because it is lighter, and comes out at the top. Nice and neat,” says Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution physical oceanographer Fiamma Straneo, who has now led two survey trips to Sermilik Fjord at the base of Helheim Glacier, Greenland.
Cambridge University has released another film in their ‘Cambridge Ideas’ series entitled ‘This Icy World’ shown below. The small film looks at the contribution of Greenland to global sea level change and the mapping of previous unkown basins and mountains beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Video The film showcases the work of glaciologist Professor Julian
It is the fundamental structural element of all living things. It is a key component of many energy sources, and, it is a crucial player in our planet’s climate system. The natural cycling of this element — Carbon (C) — between earth, atmosphere and ocean maintains the habitable conditions that all Life depends upon. Much
With warming temperatures worldwide much speculation has been focused on how the Antarctic and Greenland ice-sheets will react. Hotter temperatures, in theory, should be bad for ice, but according to new research published in a letter in the 27 January edition of the journal Nature, hotter summers may not be as catastrophic for the Greenland
A new study published online in the journal Nature Geoscience has uncovered data that shows over the past 30 years the decreases in the amount of snow and ice covering the Earth’s surface has decreased the reflective capacity of the Earth and exacerbated global warming much more than previous climate models had estimated. “The cryosphere
Since we had plenty of news last Friday and I was heading out of town, I decided to leave our weekly roundup of global weirding and environmental news (that we didn’t already cover) to Monday. Here’s the global weirding portion. Climate: Student Reporters Take on Climate Change and Security Coincidences abound—just after posting an item
A new study published in the most recent edition of the journal Nature Geoscience has shown that meltwater from small mountain glaciers and ice caps will contribute anywhere between seven and eighteen centimetres to world sea level rise by the year 2100. The largest of these contributors will be the glaciers in Arctic Canada, Alaska,
The northernmost mummified forest ever discovered in Canada is under the spotlight of researchers who are hoping to gain valuable information as to how plants will manage in a changing climate. The trees are located in Ellesmere Island National Park in Canada and were perfectly preserved by a landslide some 2 to 8 million years
A new study to come out of the University of British Columbia has shown that sudden changes in the amount of meltwater contributes more to the acceleration, and thus the eventual loss, of the Greenland ice sheet than the gradual increase of temperature, reversing previously thought views on the matter. “The conventional view has been
Glaciers in the colder climates of our planet have been helping the mountains grow taller, according to new research which contradicts previously held theories regarding the effect glaciers had on mountains. Before this study, scientists thought that any interaction between a mountain and a glacier resulted in what was dubbed the “glacial buzz saw” –
Clues found near the summit of Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii suggest that changes in a far flung climate system had implications all over the world. Boulders deposited on the summit of Mauna Kea by an ancient glacier have provided evidence of ancient glacier formation, a result of the most recent ice age,
A new study shows that glaciers that lose their attachment to the seafloor and begin floating start behaving very erratically. The study, led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego glaciologist Fabian Walter and colleagues, to be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, present the first detailed observations of a glacier detaching from
One of Greenland’s largest glaciers has suffered an abrupt breakup and retreat, losing a chunk approximately one-eighth the size of Manhattan Island. This is an extended article following up on a previous summary provided on Planetsave. The Jakobshavn Isbrae, also known as the Jakobshavn Glacier, lost a 7 square kilometre (2.7 square mile) section of
>> Welcome Readers! Did you know that Green Options has 15 sites? If you like this post, please subscribe for our main RSS feed or the Green Options Newsletter! Ever since I first saw Ernie and almost the entire felt-cast of Sesame Street do “The Rubber Duck, Duck” dance on Sesame Street, I have had
Fears about the Arctic melting away during northern summers are proving to be far from unfounded, with the latest reports rolling in from Alaska and Greenland showing disturbing trends. New shipping lanes are opening up through what were once icy seas near Alaska, and glaciers that have so far withstood much of what the environment
