Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels grew at a record pace in 2016, to 403.3 parts per million (ppm), up from 400.0 in 2015, the UN World Meteorological Organization just revealed as part of its annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin. The growth rate in atmospheric carbon dioxide in 2016 was thus around 50% faster than the average of
The Greenland ice sheet is far more vulnerable to climate change than wraps previously thought, based on recent findings from the University of Cambridge. Through the use of a new model — which takes into account the role that the “soft, spongy ground beneath the ice sheet plays in its changing dynamics”, as well as
Southern Greenland experienced nearly complete deglaciation during a warm period over 400,000 years ago, according to new research. The warming was apparently enough to tip the massive ice-sheet of southern Greenland past its stability threshold — eventually resulting in 4-6 meters of global sea level rise. This new research represents some of the first to
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
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,
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
Low-level clouds usually reflect solar energy back into space, as does the white coverage of snow. The albedo of cloud and snow — it’s ability to reflect sunlight back into space — is vitally important for minimising the level of solar energy wandering around inside our atmosphere, heating up our planet. One of the fears
“I am going out on this broken fin, and I assume it won’t collapse” — so says James Balog as he slides over to the edge of an endless cliff of ice that would make many feel faint simply to observe. Balog is nothing if not obsessive — however, brilliantly so. Needing his third knee
Here’s a scientific dilemma for you to put your mind to for a moment: what do you do when you need specific readings from locations all-but impossible to reach by any traditional human means? Turns out, if you are David Holland, a professor at New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, you recruit
A new climate diagnostic tool has revealed gale-force winds whipping around the Greenland coast are driving ocean circulation by affecting ocean waters, deep sea currents and sea ice behaviour. “We now have a more complete understanding of the complexity of the climate system,” says Moore, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Physical
Understanding the specifics of how global climate change will affect any one specific region is tricky, but two researchers have tackled the issue of what will happen to Greenland over the next century, and the news is not encouraging. “We put Greenland under a microscope to see what accounts for melting and for ice mass
It’s too late! We’re all going to die! So says the latest research to be published in the respected journal Environmental Research Letters. OK. I might be jumping to a bit of a dramatic conclusion there. In fact, the study in question has shown that the levels of greenhouse gasses we have already pumped into the
Most years would see us waiting until early September before we received notification of any record of Greenlandic melting being broken or not, but this year we get the news early! Four weeks early, in fact, according to Marco Tedesco, assistant professor of Earth and atmospheric sciences at The City College of New York, who has
The Greenland Ice Sheet is of major concern to scientists the world over in a world that is warming rapidly and causing massive ice melt to occur. However, recent research has shown that the Greenland Ice Sheet may in fact be more robust and dynamic than previously thought. The research was conducted by the University of
I’m sure this is not what global warming naysayers want to hear, but an iceberg about twice the size of Manhattan has just broken off of a Greenland glacier, Petermann Glacier. This was actually predicted by scientists last Fall, but as you should well know by now, scientists are just money-hungry, greedy, lying rascals
A massive 100 kilometre-wide crater has been discovered in Greenland and redefined the record books by being the remains of an impact that is a full billion years earlier than any other known collision on Earth. It’s a fascinating story and one that will continue to evolve and should help shed light on a
Considering that we didn’t start getting satellites up into the atmosphere until the 1970s, it comes as no surprise that recently discovered photographs from the 1930s depicting Greenland’s glaciers are viewed as a precious scientific resource. Rediscovered in a castle just outside of Copenhagen, Denmark, the photographs below spawn from 1930s aerial surveys of
Researchers from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks have found large measures of geologic methane seeping up the edges of the thawing permafrost and receding glaciers in Alaska and Greenland. The retreat of Arctic permafrost and glaciers often reveal previously frozen organic matter like dead plants or animals, which subsequently decays and releases methane, often
Understanding the contribution outlet glaciers have on the global sea level rise is tricky business, and as a new study shows, we are seriously lacking in long-term information. A lack of long-term data often results in faulty assumptions and hypotheses Previous studies looking at the contribution outlet glaciers have on the global sea level rise
According to a new study the Greenland ice sheet is possibly more vulnerable to the temperature increase of global warming than previously estimated. According to the study, conducted by scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and published in the journal Nature Climate Change, the temperature
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” said George Santayana, and scientists who have been studying the past environments and archaeological remains of Greenland and Iceland believe the same thing. Scientists including Professor Andrew Dugmore of the University of Edinburgh have studied how well the Norse responded to changes in the
Over on the wonderful, leading bicycle site Copenhagenize, Mikael Colville-Andersen shared some pretty superb pictures of and comments on bicycling in Greenland and other northern countries last month. This one above is just so beautiful to me. Here’s more from Copenhagenize: Greenland is an area we haven’t covered much here on Copenhagenize. We’ve noticed that many
The year 2010 saw an unusually high melting season in Greenland which subsequently impacted the amount of ice weighing down the bedrock of the island causing it to lose 100 billion tonnes of ice and uplift by as much as 20 millimetres. These findings come courtesy of nearly 50 GPS stations that have been planted
New research has provided evidence to suggest that massive melting of ice sheets like the Greenland ice sheet does not need corresponding record temperature highs, rather, just persistent warm weather over several years. Such results suggest that glaciers and ice sheets could undergo a self-amplifying cycle of melting and warming simply if there is persistently
The black spots below are not problems with the photography, but rather lakes in what is normally the arid Gobi Desert in the Chinese Autonomous Region of Inner Mongolia.
Scientists working with NASA’s Operation IceBridge airborne research campaign started their third year of survey flights and captured this image of the sea ice covering the Weddell Sea.
A new doctoral thesis has shown that industrial chemicals are making their way north to the Arctic from the industrialised world via air and sea currents, where they are then absorbed by the sea’s food chains, of which the polar bear is at the top.
In this stunning black and white image taken by the European Space Agency’s Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) on board Envisat, we get to see Spitsbergen, Norway’s largest island.
When I stand next to The Times Atlas of the World which has recently garnered so much controversy, sitting in its lovely hardcover slipcase to protect the lovely hardcover beauty that is the atlas itself, it comes up to just below my knee. It’s really big. It deserves to be though, because inside is a series of maps, pages of information and a very comprehensive Index of places.
Here’s my review of The Times Atlas of the World.
The publishers of The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World, Harper Collins, have issued a press release apologising for the inaccuracy of their press release which stated that Greenland had lost 15% of its permanent ice cap.
Only days after the 13th and newest edition of The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World was released to much acclaim and news reporting, scientists from the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge University have raised concerns about the claims made by the atlas that there has been a 15% decrease in the permanent ice cover of Greenland in the past 12 years.
“Although I knew what to expect in terms of ice loss from satellite imagery, I was still completely unprepared for the gob-smacking scale of the breakup, which rendered me speechless,” said Dr Alun Hubbard upon viewing pictures which illustrate just how quickly the Petermann Glacier in Greenland has retreated in just two years.
Much concern has been made about the dramatic drop in Arctic sea ice levels over the past decade, but new research out of Denmark suggests that the extent of the Arctic sea ice is extremely variable.
Small amounts of subsurface warming of oceans can trigger a massive and rapid collapse of ice shelves, according to an analysis of prehistoric “Heinrich events.”
“If West Antarctica collapsed, that means it’s more unstable than we expected, which is quite scary,” said a scientist who set out to determine whether Greenland or Antarctica will introduce more melting water to rising sea levels.
The Petermann Ice Island-A (PII-A) iceberg can be seen in this July 20th image floating off the coast of Newfoundland, almost a year after it calved off the Petermann Glacier on the northwest coast of Greenland.
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.
After 11 months since it calved off the northwestern coast of Greenland, this massive ice island is now wandering around off the coast of Labrador, Canada, caught int he ocean currents.
“If you put an ice cube in a warm room, it will melt in several hours. But if you put an ice cube in a cup of warm water, it will disappear in just minutes.”
This Envisat image taken on June 23, 2011, shows the retreating ice across part of the east coast of Greenland.
Dr. Jeff Masters, a world-leading meteorologist, just finished a compilation of what he considered 2010’s top 20 extreme weather events. All in all, he considers 2010 to be the most extreme year for weather since records began and, unfortunately, with a good understanding of climate change, he hints at what we could be in for if we don’t turn things around quickly.
According to new research into the collapse of a centuries old colony established by Vikings in Western Greenland, human adaptation to changing climate may not be a new problem at all.
Below, are images from the eruption and of the ash plume that ended up disrupting air travel in Iceland, followed shortly by Greenland, Scotland, Norway, Svalbard and a small part of Denmark, Northern Ireland, northern England and Northern Germany.
Scientists have long known that climate change was happening in West Greenland over the past 5,000 years, but until now they have not been able to quantify the specific conditions of that change. New research has allowed scientists to predict that abrupt temperature changes by as much as 4 or 5 degrees Celsius will have had profound implications for the peoples that occupied western Greenland during that time.
Two of Greenland’s largest three glaciers have lost enough ice that they could have filled Lake Erie with the accumulated melted ice water.
More than a thousand icebergs break off southern Labrador and northern Newfoundland from late May to late June each year, earning this stretch of the Labrador Sea featured in the image below the nickname ‘Iceberg Alley.’
