For "Polar Ice"& "Snowball Earth", see See this file.
GLACIERS & POLAR ICE:
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July 7, 09: New NASA satellite measurements show that sea ice in the Arctic is more than just shrinking in area, it is dramatically thinning. The volume of older crucial sea ice in the Arctic has shrunk by 57% from the winter of 2004 to 2008. That's losing more volume of ice than water in Lake Michigan.
Jun 23, 09: After a long gap, scientists in Nepal have embarked on the first field studies of Himalayan glacial lakes, some of which are feared to be swelling dangerously due to global warming.
. . Appa Sherpa, who has climbed Everest a record number of times said recently that he had seen fresh water at the height of above 8,000m on Everest.
. . One such study by the UN Environment Program and ICIMOD, nearly 10 years ago, warned that 20 glacial lakes in Nepal and 24 in Bhutan were swelling so rapidly that they could burst by 2009. A burst lake would cause flash floods, which could sweep away buildings and roads or even whole communities in countries like Nepal and Bhutan. This has already happened more than 30 times in and around Nepal in the last 70 years.
. . Major local rivers, like the Ganges, Bramhaputra, Meghna and Indus, have most of their tributaries fed by snow melt from Himalayan glaciers. But in the long term, when the glaciers have retreated, the rivers could dry up almost entirely during the dry season. This could cause an unprecedented crisis in the water supply for millions of people in the region.
Apr 29, 09: Massive ice chunks are crumbling away from a shelf in the western Antarctic Peninsula, researchers said Wednesday, warning that 1,300 square miles of ice —-an area larger than Rhode Island-— was in danger of breaking off in coming weeks.
. . The Wilkins Ice Shelf had been stable for most of the last century, but began retreating in the 1990s. Researchers believe it was held in place by an ice bridge linking Charcot Island to the Antarctic mainland. But the 330-square-kim bridge lost two large chunks last year and then shattered completely on April 5.
Apr 28, 09: An area of an Antarctic ice shelf almost the size of New York City has broken into icebergs this month after the collapse of an ice bridge widely blamed on global warming, a scientist said.
Apr 8, 09: Arctic sea ice, a key component of Earth's natural thermostat, has thinned sharply in recent years with the northern polar ice cap shrinking steadily in surface area, government scientists said.
. . Thinner seasonal sea ice, which melts in summer and freezes again every year, now accounts for about 70% of the Arctic total, up from 40 to 50% in the 1980s and '90s, the researchers said, citing new satellite data.
At the same time, thicker ice, which lasts two summers or more without melting, now comprises less than 10% of the northern polar ice cap in winter, down from 30 to 40%. Just two years ago, the thicker so-called perennial sea ice made up 20% or more of the winter cap.
Apr 6, 09: Arctic sea ice thinnest ever going into spring. Researchers say that as spring approaches, more than 90% of the sea ice in the Arctic is only one or two years old. That makes it thinner and more vulnerable than ever before.
Apr 3, 09: A large ice shelf is "imminently" close to breaking away from part of the Antarctic Peninsula, scientists said. atellite images released by the European Space Agency show new cracks in the Wilkins Ice Shelf where it connects to Charcot Island, a piece of land considered part of the peninsula. In February 2008, the shelf dropped 425 square km of ice. In May it lost a 62-square-mile chunk.
. . "During the last year, the ice shelf has lost about 1800 square km, or about 14% of its size." "It had been there almost unchanged since the first expeditions which mapped it back in the 1930s, so it had a very long period of real stability, and it's only in the last decade that it's started to retreat", Vaughan said.
Wilkins is the size of the state of Connecticut, or about half the area of Scotland. It is the largest ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula yet to be threatened.
Apr 2, 09: AGAIN! Arctic sea ice is melting so fast most of it could be gone in 30 years. A new analysis of changing conditions in the region, using complex computer models of weather and climate, says conditions that had been forecast by the end of the century could occur much sooner. A change in the amount of ice is important because the white surface reflects sunlight back into space.
. . "Due to the recent loss of sea ice, the 2005-2008 autumn central Arctic surface air temperatures were greater than 5 degrees C) above" what would be expected, the new study reports. That amount of temp increase had been expected by the year 2070.
Mar 23, 09: Ice cover on the Great Lakes has declined more than 30% since the 1970s, leaving the world's largest system of freshwater lakes open to evaporation and lower water levels, according to scientists.
Mar 18, 09: The West Antarctic ice sheet may start to collapse if sea temperatures rise by 5 degrees C, triggering a thaw that would raise world ocean levels by 5 meters, U.S. scientists said. Such a rise in sea levels --taking thousands of years-- would swamp many coasts and cities and wipe some low-lying Pacific islands off the map.
. . West Antarctica, the part of the frozen continent most vulnerable to climate change, has thawed several times in the past few million years, most recently 400,000 years ago.
The study "suggests the Western Antarctic ice sheet will begin to collapse when nearby ocean temperatures warm by roughly 5 C."
Mar 5, 09: The Senate has cleared the way for the Obama administration to reverse a rule saying that greenhouse gases cannot be restricted in an effort to protect polar bears from global warming.
Mar 5, 09: The Arctic is warming up so quickly that the region's sea ice cover in summer could vanish as early as 2013, decades earlier than some had predicted, a leading polar expert said.
Feb 27, 09: Antarctica's western ice sheet is pushing ever faster into the sea, but scientists know an even greater long-term threat lies here in the vast, little-explored whiteness of east Antarctica.
Feb 25, 09: Antarctic glaciers are melting faster across a much wider area than previously thought, scientists said —-a development that could lead to an unprecedented rise in sea levels. A report by thousands of scientists for the 2007-2008 International Polar Year concluded that the western part of the continent is warming up, not just the Antarctic Peninsula. Previously, most of the warming was thought to occur on the narrow stretch pointing toward South America.
. . The biggest west Antarctic glacier, the Pine Island Glacier, is moving 40% faster than it was in the 1970s, discharging water and ice more rapidly into the ocean, Summerhayes said. The Smith Glacier, also in west Antarctica, is moving 83% faster than it did in 1992, he said. All the glaciers in the area together are losing a total of around 103 billion metric tons per year because the discharge is much greater than the new snowfall, he said.
. . "That's equivalent to the current mass loss from the whole of the Greenland ice sheet," Summerhayes said, adding that the glaciers' discharge was making a significant contribution to the rise in sea levels. "We didn't realize it was moving that fast."
. . The glaciers are slipping into the sea faster because the floating ice shelf that would normally stop them — usually 200 to 300 meters thick —-is melting. A 2007 IPCC report predicted a sea level rise of 18 to 58 cm by the end of the century, which could flood low-lying areas and force millions to flee. The group said an additional 10 to 20 cm rise was possible if the recent, surprising melting of polar ice sheets continues. Summerhayes said the rise could be much higher.
. . The IPY researchers found the southern ocean around Antarctica has warmed about 0.2 degrees C in the past decade, double the average warming of the rest of the Earth's oceans over the past 30 years.
Feb 10, 09: For the past month or so, news has been circulating around the Internet that global levels of sea ice -—i.e., the floating ice that forms on top of ocean water—- are back to where they were in 1979. In particular, Arctic sea ice, which was supposed to be melting rapidly, reportedly "rebounded" in 2008. This argument, which originated on the Website Daily Tech, rests in large part on the reported "rebounding" of Arctic sea ice in 2008 and is being held up by climate-change contrarians as a "gotcha" to Al Gore-ish Chicken Littles. Scientists who study the cryosphere, however, say that the latest data on sea ice does nothing to refute global warming -—unless you willfully misread it.
. . First of all, the predictions that the article refers to were in regard to summer sea ice—no one is claiming that the Arctic will see ice-free Christmases anytime soon. Predictions as to when those watery Arctic summers might commence range anywhere from 2013 to 2100.
As for the "substantial recovery" claim -—well, sea ice always "recovers" in the winter, in the sense that it grows back after it melts. And, yes, September 2008 did show more ice than September 2007—but we'd would argue that going from the worst summer on record to the second-worst is nothing to crow about.
. . January 09 showed the sixth-lowest Arctic extent on record for any January since 1979, and right now, with about a month left in the 2008-2009 freezing season, Arctic ice extent is lagging well below 1979-2000 seasonal averages. Plus, the Arctic ice pack as a whole is much younger and thinner than it was decades ago, meaning large areas are vulnerable to melting out in the summer.
. . The "miraculous recovery" argument makes the classic mistake of confusing short-term changes with long-term trends. The rate at which sea ice melts or freezes is determined by a complex mix of variables: not just atmospheric temperature but also wind patterns, ocean currents, saline levels, and the amount of open water surrounding the ice. So looking at a single data point is bound to skew your analysis if you ignore the clear and persistent long-term changes.
Feb 5, 09: Melting ice from global warming may raise sea levels even more than had been expected, an analysis suggests. Long-term melting of ice in Antarctica and other areas could raise sea levels by 16 feet to 17 feet, previous studies have indicated. But a report warns that factors not previously considered could boost that increase to up to 21 feet in some areas. Earlier research has focused on melting ice adding water to the oceans and on thermal expansion of sea water in a warmer climate.
Dec 16, 08: More than 2 trillion tons of land ice in Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska have melted since 2003, according to new NASA satellite data that show the latest signs of what scientists say is global warming. More than half of the loss of landlocked ice in the past five years has occurred in Greenland, which seems to be accelerating.
. . Since 2003, when the NASA satellite started taking measurements, Alaska has lost 400 billion tons of land ice.
. . In the 1990s, Greenland didn't add to world sea level rise; now that island is adding about half a millimeter of sea level rise a year. Between Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska, melting land ice has raised global sea levels about one-fifth of an inch in the past five years, Luthcke said. Sea levels also rise from water expanding as it warms.
. . Parts of the Arctic north of Alaska were 9 to 10 degrees warmer this past fall, a strong early indication of what researchers call the Arctic amplification effect. That's when the Arctic warms faster than predicted, and warming there is accelerating faster than elsewhere on the globe. As sea ice melts, the Arctic waters absorb more heat in the summer, having lost the reflective powers of vast packs of white ice.
. . Arctic thawing is releasing methane —-the second most potent greenhouse gas. One study shows that the loss of sea ice warms the water, which warms the permafrost on nearby land in Alaska, thus producing methane, Stroeve says.
. . A second study suggests even larger amounts of frozen methane are trapped in lakebeds and sea bottoms around Siberia and they are starting to bubble to the surface in some spots in alarming amounts.
. . Semiletov found methane bubbling up from parts of the East Siberian Sea and Laptev Sea at levels that were 10 times higher than they were in the mid-1990s, he said based on a study this summer. The amounts of methane in the region could dramatically increase global warming if they get released, he said. That, Semiletov said, "should alarm people."
Dec 17, 08: In the past five years, Greenland has lost between 150 gigatons and 160 gigatons each year, (one gigaton = one billion tons), or enough to raise global sea levels about .5 mm per year.
. . Mountain glaciers in the Gulf of Alaska lost about 84 gigatons each year, about five times the average annual flow of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.
. . "The best estimates are that sea levels will rise about 18 to 36 inches by the end of the century, but because of what's going on and how fast things are changing, there's a lot of uncertainty."
Dec 8, 08: Chief Bill Erasmus of the Dene nation in northern Canada brought a stark warning about the climate crisis: The once abundant herds of caribou are dwindling, rivers are running lower and the ice is too thin to hunt on.
. . Erasmus raised his concerns in recent days on the sidelines of a U.N. climate conference, seeking to ensure that North America's indigenous peoples are not left out in the cold when it comes to any global warming negotiations.
. . Erasmus, the 54-year-old elected leader of 30,000 native Americans in Canada, and representatives of other indigenous peoples met with the U.N.'s top climate official, Yvo de Boer, and have lobbied national delegations to recognize them as an "expert group" that can participate in the talks like other nongovernment organizations.
. . Erasmus, from Yellow Knife in Canada's Northwest Territories about 480 km south of the Arctic Circle, brings firsthand experience of climate change. The caribou, or reindeer, herds are declining across North America and northern Europe, he said. "We can't hunt because the ice is not frozen yet. Our hunters are falling through the ice, and lives are being lost."
Nov 29, 08: Scientists have identified new rifts on an Antarctic ice shelf that could lead to it breaking away from the Antarctic Peninsula.
Nov 27, 08: U.S. scientists have figured out how icebergs break off Antarctica and Greenland, a finding that may help predict rising sea levels as the climate warms. They said icebergs formed fast when parent ice sheets spread out quickly over the sea.
. . "It won't help the Titanic, but a newly derived, simple law may help scientists improve their climate models" and predict ice sheet break-up.
. . Ice cracking off into the ocean from Antarctica and Greenland could be the main contributor to global sea level rises in the future. If all the ice in Greenland and Antarctica melted, seas would rise by more than 60 meters.
. . In Antarctica, the Ross Ice Shelf extends 500 miles over the ocean before the edges snap off and form icebergs. Many other ice sheets stretch just a mile or two.
. . Computer models that predict how ice sheets behave in warmer weather generally gloss over exactly how icebergs break off because researchers have failed to understand the mechanism, known as calving. A fast spread means cracks form throughout the shelf and make it crack up. A slower spread means that deep cracks do not form as fast and the ice sticks together.
. . The U.N. Climate Panel predicts seas will rise by 18 to 59 cm this century because of warming stoked by human use of fossil fuels.
Nov 17, 08: Great floods beneath the Antarctic ice sheet can now be linked directly to the speed at which that ice moves towards the ocean, scientists say. They've been able show how the giant Byrd Glacier in east Antarctica sped up just as two lakes under the ice overflowed. The flood water acts as a lubricant, easing the ice over the bedrock. The addition of a little bit of water and a change of lubrication at the bed of a glacier can produce quite large-scale changes."
. . There are more than 150 lakes; and the biggest, Lake Vostok, is the size of Lake Ontario in North America. Despite being capped by, in some cases, several kilometers of ice, the lakes' contents stay liquid because of warm spots in the underlying rock.
. . It was always thought, however, that these lakes were stagnant bodies, containing waters that were perhaps unaltered for millions of years. Only in 2005 did scientists discover that the lakes' levels could actually change rapidly --they can fill and burst their rims under the ice sheet. When they fill and flood, they actually lift the ice up by several meters --something which can be seen by overflying satellites that measure the height of the ice.
. . In a normal year, Byrd Glacier would funnel something on the order of 20 billion tons of ice through a tight fjord towards the Ross Sea, with that ice stream moving at approximately 825m per year. Between December 2005 and February 2007, the glacier dumped about 22 billion tons of ice a year.
. . It has been shown how polar glaciers speed up when the floating ice shelves that block their way to the ocean are removed. And in Greenland, scientists suspect the melt waters that drain through holes, or moulins, in the ice cap to the bedrock may have contributed to the speed-up of glaciers in that region, too.
Oct 28, 08: The thickness of Arctic sea ice "plummeted" last winter, thinning by as much as 49 cm (1.6ft) in some regions, satellite data has revealed. A study by UK researchers showed that the ice thickness had been fairly constant for the previous five winters.
Oct 27, 08: The secrets of the largest ice sheet on earth are to be revealed under plans to map the Antarctic landscape in detail for the first time. A team including Edinburgh scientists is to travel across East Antarctica in a four-year project to explore the land hidden beneath the ice-covered region. Radar instruments will be used to penetrate the ice, which covers an area half the size of the US.
Oct 16, 08: Autumn temperatures in the Arctic are at record levels, the Arctic Ocean is getting warmer and less salty as sea ice melts, and reindeer herds appear to be declining, researchers reported. Autumn air temperatures in the Arctic are at a record 5 Celsius above normal. 2007 was the warmest year on record the Arctic, leading to a record loss of sea ice. This year's sea ice melt was second only to 2007.
. . In addition to global warming, there are natural cycles of warming and cooling, and a warm cycle in the 1990s added to the temperature rise. Now with a cooler cycles in some areas the rise in temperatures has slowed, but Overland said he expects that it will speed up again when the next natural warming cycle comes around.
. . Asked if an increase in radiation from the sun was having an effect on the Earth's climate, Jason Box of the Byrd Polar Research Center in Columbus, Ohio, said while it's important, increased solar output only accounts for about 10% of global warming.
. . Warming has continued around Greenland in 2007 resulting in a record amount of ice melt. The Greenland ice sheet lost 24 cubic miles of ice, making it the largest single contributor to global sea level rise.
Sept 16, 08: Crucial Arctic sea ice this summer shrank to its second lowest level on record, continuing an alarming trend, scientists said.
. . This underscores the need for governments to speed up talks on a new climate pact, the Worldwide Fund for Nature said.
Sept 4, 08: Sea levels globally are very unlikely to rise by more than 2m this century, scientists conclude. Major increases would have to be fuelled by a faster flow of glaciers on the Greenland or Antarctic ice sheets. But a US team concludes that a rise of 2m would need glaciers to reach speeds that are "physically untenable". However, even increases substantially less than 2m would cause major issues for many societies.
Sept 2, 08: The ice shelves in Canada's High Arctic have lost a colossal area this year, scientists report. The floating tongues of ice attached to Ellesmere Island, which have lasted for thousands of years, have seen almost a quarter of their cover break away. One of them, the 50 sq km (20 sq miles) Markham shelf, has completely broken off to become floating sea-ice. "These changes are irreversible under the present climate."
. . The shelves themselves are merely remnants of a much larger feature that was once bounded to Ellesmere Island and covered almost 10,000 sq km. Over the past 100 years, this expanse of ice has retreated by 90%, and at the start of this summer season covered just under 1,000 sq km. Unlike much of the floating sea-ice which comes and goes, the shelves contain ice that is up to 4,500 years old.
Aug 27, 08: New satellite measurements show that crucial sea ice in the Arctic Ocean has plummeted to its second lowest level on record. The National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., announced that the extent of sea ice in the Arctic is down to 2.03 million square miles. The lowest point on record is 1.65 million square miles set last September. With about three weeks left in the melt season, the record may fall, scientists say.
. . As global warming thaws the frozen soils of the Arctic, more stored-up CO2 could potentially be released into the atmosphere than previously thought, a new study suggests. Much of the frigid Arctic's soil is permafrost, or permanently frozen ground. Seasonal freeze-thaw cycles can mix up the soil layers, a process called cryoturbation, forcing organic (carbon-based) material into the subsurface layers and storing it in the permafrost.
. . With Arctic temps projected to rise up to 6 degrees C(10.8 degrees F) over the next 100 years, there is concern that this CO2 will be released as greenhouse gases as the soil thaws, further fueling global warming. But scientists haven't known exactly how much CO2 is stored in the Arctic permafrost.
. . In a new study, researchers factored in CO2 amounts from lower depths of the permafrost than had been included in previous studies. They calculated that the North American Arctic contains 60% more CO2 than previously estimated. "Releasing even a portion of this CO2 into the atmosphere ... would have a significant impact on Earth's climate."
Aug 21, 08: In northern Greenland, a part of the Arctic that had seemed immune from global warming, new satellite images show a growing giant crack and an 11-square-mile chunk of ice hemorrhaging off a major glacier.
Aug 21, 08: A 29-square-km piece of the Petermann Glacier broke away between July 10 and 24. The chunk was about half the size of Manhattan. The Petermann Glacier is one of the approximately 130 glaciers that flow out of the Greenland ice sheet and into the sea. It has a floating section of ice about 16 km wide and 80 km long --an area of about 1,295 square km.
. . Researchers also noticed what appears to be a massive crack in the glacier that could signal an imminent and much larger breakup. Between 2001 and 2005, a massive breakup of the Jakobshavn erased 94 square km from the ice field.
. . On the other end of the globe, Antarctica's Wilkins Ice Shelf has been hanging on by just a thread as more large pieces of ice broke away from it earlier this summer.
Aug 21, 08: New satellite images reveal that a massive ice chunk recently broken away from one of Greenland's glaciers, which researchers say will continue to disintegrate within the next year.
July 28, 08: Giant sheets of ice totaling almost eight square miles broke off an ice shelf in the Canadian Arctic last week and more could follow later this year, scientists said. Temperatures in large parts of the Arctic have risen far faster than the global average in recent decades, a development that experts say is linked to global warming. It was the largest fracture of its kind since the nearby Ayles ice shelf --which measured 25 square miles-- broke away in 2005.
. . Ellesmere Island was once home to a single enormous ice shelf totaling around 3,500 square miles. All that is left of that shelf today are five much smaller shelves that together cover just under 400 square miles.
July 23, 08: Tiny fossils have helped refine the timing of the climate shift that gave rise to Antarctica's remarkable Dry Valleys, a landscape akin to Mars. The famously ice-free terrain enjoyed more benign, tundra-like conditions 14 million years ago --but then flipped to the intensely cold setting seen today.
. . Ancient lake-living shrimp-like creatures can pinpoint the big switch. The ostracods would not have coped with a harsh, dry environment, they say.
. . "Our dating says the lake existed 14 million years ago, and within about 250,000 years of that lake existing and holding those ostracods, all the glaciers in the surrounding area stopped melting and they become cold-based and began to evaporate. "So after about 13.8 million years ago, there's no water --it's bone dry, dry-frozen."
July 12, 08: Twenty Russian scientists are to be taken off their ice camp in the Arctic because the melt has set in sooner than expected.
July 10, 08: Images taken by its Envisat remote-sensing satellite show that Wilkins Ice Shelf is "hanging by its last thread" to Charcot Island, one of the plate's key anchors to the Antarctic peninsula. "Since the connection to the island... helps stabilize the ice shelf, it is likely the breakup of the bridge will put the remainder of the ice shelf at risk", it said. Wilkins Ice Shelf had been stable for most of the last century, covering around 16,000 square km.
. . Two big breakoffs this year left only a narrow ice bridge about 2.7 km wide to connect the shelf to Charcot and nearby Latady Island. The latest images, taken by Envisat's radar, say fractures have now opened up in this bridge and adjacent areas of the plate are disintegrating, creating large icebergs.
. . The Antarctic peninsula --the tongue of land that juts northward from the white continent towards South America-- has had one of the highest rates of warming anywhere in the world in recent decades.
. . But this latest stage of the breakup occurred during the Southern Hemisphere's winter, when atmospheric temperatures are at their lowest. One idea is that warmer water from the Southern Ocean is reaching the underside of the ice shelf and thinning it rapidly from underneath. In the past three decades, six Antarctic ice shelves have collapsed completely --Prince Gustav Channel, Larsen Inlet, Larsen A, Larsen B, Wordie, Muller and the Jones Ice Shelf. "The scale of rifting in the newly-removed areas seems larger, and the pieces are moving out as large bergs and not toppled, finely-divided ice melange."
. . Meanwhile at the top of the world, melting has become so rapid that scientists say the North Pole could be ice-free this summer.
Jun 19, 08: Arctic sea ice is melting even faster than last year, despite a cold winter.
. . Data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) shows that the year began with ice covering a larger area than at the beginning of 2007. But now it is down to levels seen last June, at the beginning of a summer that broke records for sea ice loss.
. . Scientists on the project say much of the ice is so thin as to melt easily, and the Arctic seas may be ice-free in summer within five to 10 years. A few years ago, scientists were predicting that Arctic waters would be ice-free in summers by about 2080. Then computer models started projecting earlier dates, around 2030 to 2050.
. . Then came the 2007 summer that saw Arctic sea ice shrink to the smallest extent ever recorded, down to 4.2 million sq km from 7.8 million sq km in 1980. By the end of last year, one research group was forecasting ice-free summers by 2013.
Jun 2, 08: Since 1978, the surface area covered by Antarctica's sea ice has expanded by an average of 0.5% annually; however, it's a matter of debate whether sea ice covers as much territory today as it once did in the early 1970s.
. . The likeliest explanation is a disturbing one. According to a 2005 NASA-funded study, warmer temperatures have caused greater snowfall around the continent's edges, where the open oceans provide plenty of raw material for precipitation.
. . Four of the continent's largest glaciers are retreating rapidly, and researchers blame increases in ocean temperature. The diminishment of such massive glaciers means that, despite the slow creep forward of the continent's sea ice, the total mass of all Antarctic ice—which includes inland ice—has experienced a marked decrease.
. . Furthermore, snow is melting much farther inland than ever, as well as high up in the Transantarctic Mountains.
. . Some of these events might be due to causes that aren't necessarily related to human activity; it's been well-established, for example, that the Antarctic is heavily affected by naturally occurring El Niño/La Niña cycles in ways that scientists have yet to fully comprehend.
. . Ultimately, though, it's the Arctic that should be of greater concern at the moment. Perennial sea ice used to cover up to 60% of the Arctic; now that figure has been halved. According to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which analyzes data from the QuickSCAT satellite, the Arctic lost a Texas-size chunk of perennial sea ice between 2005 and 2007.
May 25, 08: Dramatic evidence of the break-up of the Arctic ice-cap has emerged from research during an expedition by the Canadian military. Scientists travelling with the troops found major new fractures during an assessment of the state of giant ice shelves in Canada's far north. The team found a network of cracks that stretched for more than 16km on Ward Hunt, the area's largest shelf.
. . The fate of the vast ice blocks is seen as a key indicator of climate change. "It means the ice shelf is disintegrating, the pieces are pinned together like a jigsaw but could float away."
May 3, 08: Melting andean glaciers could leave 30 million high and dry. About 99% of the Chacaltaya glacier in Bolivia has disappeared since 1940, says World Bank engineer Walter Vergara, in his new report, "The Impacts of Climate Change in Latin America." One of the highest glaciers in South America, Chacaltaya is one of the first glaciers to melt due to climate change. Although the glacier is over 18,000 years old, it is expected to vanish this year.
May 2, 08: The Arctic will remain on thinning ice, and climate warming is expected to begin affecting the Antarctic also, scientists said. Last summer, sea ice in the North shrank to a record low. But while solar radiation and amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are similar at the poles, to date the regions have responded differently, with little change in the South.
. . What researchers have concluded was happening, was that in the North, global warming and natural variability of climate were reinforcing one another, sending the Arctic into a new state with much less sea ice than in the past. "And there is very little chance for the climate to return to the conditions of 20 years ago", he added.
. . On the other hand, Overland explained, the ozone hole in the Antarctic masked conditions there, keeping temperatures low in most of the continent other than the peninsula reaching toward South America. But, Overland added, as the ozone hole recovers in coming years, global warming will begin to affect the South Pole also. In the Antarctic, he explained, climate change strengthened winds blowing around the continent, helping trap colder air. But that will decrease in the future, allowing warmer conditions to begin, he said.
. . And, Marshall added, all studies now show that human activities are the drivers of climate change in the Antarctic.
Apr 24, 08: New Zealand's biggest glacier is melting at its fastest pace in recent history, a scientist said Thursday. The Tasman Glacier on South Island was 18 miles long in 1990, with virtually no lake at its front edge. New measurements last week showed the glacier was 14 miles long.
. . Meanwhile, a lake that has formed next to the glacier is now 4.4 miles long, 1.2 miles wide and 800 feet deep. The lake is now eating away at the glacier, he said. The ice cliff at the glacier's front edge is receding at a rate of 590 feet a year, its melt rate greatly aided by the lake water. As the glacial lake enlarges, it will speed up the glacier's melt to between 1,650 feet to 2,640 feet a year, he said.
Apr 24, 08: A vanished glacier with a mysterious calling card suggests Mars went through many ice ages in its very recent past. A fresh look at images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter indicates thick glaciers may have existed in the past 100 million years in the planet's equatorial region, but vanished after planetary wobbles changed the climate in certain areas.
Apr 16, 08: For an hour or so, Greenland had it's own mighty waterfall, flowing secretly at three times the volume of Niagara.
. . A meltwater lake on the surface of a glacier suddenly emptied in July 2006, sending millions of gallons of water through cracks in the ice sheet to the ground where it could affect the movement of the ice. "We found clear evidence that supraglacial lakes —-the pools of meltwater that form on the surface in summer-— can actually drive a crack through the ice sheet."
. . The lake covered 2.2 square miles near the western edge of the ice sheet and took about 24 hours to drain. During the most rapid 90 minutes, water flowed out of the lake at 2.3 million gallons per second. The minimum flow of Niagara Falls in summer is about 750,000 gallons per second.
Apr 14, 08: Glaciers and mountain snow are melting earlier in the year than usual, meaning the water has already gone when millions of people need it during the summer when rainfall is lower, scientists warned. "This is just a time bomb", said hydrologist Wouter Buytaert at a meeting of geoscientists in Vienna.
. . Those areas most at risk from a lack of water for drinking and agriculture include parts of the Middle East, southern Africa, the US, South America and the Mediterranean. Daniel Viviroli, from the U of Berne, believes nearly 40% of mountainous regions could be at risk, as they provide water to populations which cannot get it elsewhere. He says the earth's sub-tropic zones, which are home to 70% of the world's population, are the most vulnerable. In Afghanistan, home to some 3,500 of the world's glaciers, the effects of global warming are already being felt in the Hindu Kush.
Apr 10, 08: Melting ice in southern Chile caused a glacial lake to swell and then empty suddenly, sending a "tsunami" rolling through a river, a scientist said. No one was injured in the remote region.
Mar 25, 08: A chunk of Antarctic ice nine times the size of Manhattan has suddenly collapsed, putting an even larger glacial area at risk. Satellite images show the runaway disintegration of a 220-square-mile chunk in western Antarctica. British scientist David Vaughan says it's the result of global warming.
. . The rest of the Connecticut-sized ice shelf is holding on by a narrow beam of thin ice and scientists worry that it too may collapse. The Wilkins Ice Shelf has been stable for most of the last century, but began retreating in the 1990s. Six ice shelves in the same part of the continent have already been lost. "I didn't expect to see things happen this quickly. The ice shelf is hanging by a thread --we'll know in the next few days or weeks what its fate will be."
. . Since an ice shelf is a floating platform of ice, the break-up will have only a small impact on sea level (thermal expansion, but then, as the berg melts, it leaves dark sea water to absorb the sunlite!). But scientists say it heightens concerns over the impact of climate change on this part of Antarctica. Several ice shelves have retreated in the past 30 years --six of them collapsing completely.
Mar 18, 08: The thickest, oldest and toughest sea ice around the North Pole is melting, a bad sign for the future of the Arctic ice cap, NASA satellite data showed. This adds to the litany of disturbing news about Arctic sea ice, which has been retreating over the last three decades, especially last year, when it ebbed to its lowest level.
. . Melting Arctic ice does not raise sea levels as the melting of glaciers on Greenland or Antarctica could, but it does contribute to global warming when reflective white ice is replaced by dark water that absorbs the sun's heat.
. . The oldest Arctic ice that has survived six years or more is the toughest, and even that shrank dramatically. Some 965,300 square miles of perennial ice have been lost --about one and a half times the area of Alaska-- a 50% decrease between February 2007 and February 2008.
. . The oldest "tough as nails" perennial ice has decreased by about 75% this year, losing 1.5 million sq kms, or about twice the area of Texas, he said. This doesn't mean the Arctic is open water during the winter, but it does mean that in many areas, the stronger perennial ice is being replaced by younger, frailer new ice that is more easily disturbed by wind and warm sea temperatures.
. . The scientists noted sharp warming on the Antarctic Peninsula, which stretches northward from the southern continent toward South America.
Mar 17, 08: Glaciers are shrinking at record rates and many could disappear within decades, the U.N. Environment Program said. Scientists measuring the health of almost 30 glaciers around the world found that ice loss reached record levels in 2006. The rate at which some of the world's glaciers are melting has more than doubled, new data says.
. . UNEP warned that further ice loss could have dramatic consequences particularly in India, whose rivers are fed by Himalayan glaciers. The west coast of North America, which gets much of its water from glaciers in mountain ranges such as the Rockies and Sierra Nevada, also would be affected, it said. "There are many canaries emerging in the climate change coal mine", UNEP's executive director Achim Steiner said. "The glaciers are perhaps among those making the most noise and it is absolutely essential that everyone sits up and takes notice."
Feb 28, 08: Those beautiful snowflakes drifting out of the sky may have a surprise inside — bacteria. Most snow and rain forms in chilly conditions high in the sky and atmospheric scientists have long known that, under most conditions, the moisture needs something to cling to in order to condense.
. . Now, a new study shows a surprisingly large share of those so-called nucleators turn out to be bacteria that can affect plants.
. . They sampled snow from Antarctica, France, Montana and the Yukon. In some samples, as much as 85% of the nuclei were bacteria. The bacteria were most common in France, followed by Montana and the Yukon, and was even present to a lesser degree in Antarctica. The most common bacteria found was Pseudomonas syringae, which can cause disease in several types of plants including tomatoes and beans.
. . Would elimination of this bacteria result in less rain or snow, or would it be replaced by other nuclei such as soot and dust? "The question is, are they a good guy or a bad guy."
. . In a second paper, researchers report that the amount of dust blown into the tropical Pacific over the last half-million years has varied widely between warm and cold periods. Dust also has important impacts on weather and climate ranging from serving as nuclei for rain to blocking some incoming radiation from the sun, and it also delivers minerals like iron that increase growth of plankton in ocean areas. In general it tends to be windier in cold periods meaning more dust gets blown around.
. . They found that cold peaks occurred about every 100,000 years, with the last one at 20,000 years ago.
Feb 25, 08: Canadian geologists say they can shed light on how a vast lake, trapped under the ice sheet that once smothered much of North America, drained into the sea, an event that cooled Earth's climate for hundreds of years.
. . During the last ice age, the Laurentide Ice Sheet once covered most of Canada and parts of the northern US with a frozen crust that in some places was three kilometers thick. As the temperature gradually rose some 10,000 years ago, the ice receded, gouging out the hollows that would be called the Great Lakes.
. . Beneath the ice's thinning surface, an extraordinary mass of water built up --the glacial lake Agassiz-Ojibway-- a body so vast that it covered parts of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, North Dakota, Ontario and Minnesota. And then, around 8,200 years ago, Agassiz-Ojibway massively drained, sending a flow of water into the Hudson Strait and into the Labrador Sea that was 15 times greater than the present discharge of the Amazon River. By some estimates, sea levels rose 14 meters as a result.
. . How the great flood was unleashed has been a matter of debate. Some experts suggest an ice dam was smashed down, or the gushing water spewed out over the top of the icy lid. Quebec researchers Patrick Lajeunesse and Guillaume Saint-Onge believe, though, that the outburst happened under the ice sheet, rather than above it or through it. The pair describe how they criss-crossed Hudson Bay on a research vessel, using sonar to scan more than 10,500 kilometers to get a picture of the bay floor.
. . In the south of the bay, they found lines of deep waves in the sandy bed, stretching more than 900 km in length and some 1.7 meters deep. These are signs that the bay's floor, protected by the mighty lid of ice, was swept by a mighty current many years ago but has been still ever since, they say. In the west of the bay, they found curious marks in the shape of parabolas twisting around to the northeast. The arcs were chiselled as much as three meters into the sea bed and found at depths of between 80 and 205 meters. The duo believe that this part of the bay had icebergs that were swept by the massive current, & spun around.
. . "Laurentide ice was lifted buoyantly, enabling the flood to traverse southern Hudson Bay under the ice sheet", the study suggests. The influx of freshwater into the North Atlantic reduced ocean salinity so much that this braked the transport of heat flowing from the tropics to temperate regions. Temps dropped by more than three degrees C in Western Europe for 200-400 years --a mini-Ice Age in itself.
Feb 23, 08: UK scientists working in Antarctica have found some of the clearest evidence yet of instabilities in the ice of part of West Antarctica. If the trend continues, they say, it could lead to a significant rise in global sea level.
. . The new evidence comes from a group of glaciers covering an area the size of Texas, in a remote and seldom visited part of West Antarctica. The "rivers of ice" have surged sharply in speed towards the ocean. This is the area where the bed beneath the ice sheet dips down steepest towards the interior. Satellite measurements have shown that three huge glaciers here have been speeding up for more than a decade.
. . The biggest of the glaciers, the Pine Island Glacier, is causing the most concern. Julian Scott has just returned from there. He said: "This is a very important glacier; it's putting more ice into the sea than any other glacier in Antarctica. "It's a couple of kilometers thick, its 30km wide and it's moving at 3.5km per year.
. . When the weather improved, the researchers spent most of their time driving skidoos across the flat, featureless ice. "We drove skidoos over it for something like 2,500km each and we didn't see a single piece of topography." Rob Bingham was towing a radar on a 100m-long line and detecting reflections from within the ice using a receiver another 100m behind that.
. . The signals are revealing ancient flow lines in the ice. The hope is to reconstruct how it moved in the past. Julian Scott was performing seismic studies, using pressurized hot water to drill holes 20m or so into the ice and place explosive charges in them. He used arrays of geophones strung out across the ice to detect reflections, looking, among other things, for signs of soft sediments beneath the ice that might be lubricating its flow.
. . Throughout the 1990s, according to satellite measurements, the glacier was accelerating by around 1% a year. Julian Scott's sensational finding this season is that it now seems to have accelerated by 7% in a single season. "That is far greater than the accelerations they were getting excited about in the 1990s."
. . The reason does not seem to be warming in the surrounding air. One possible culprit could be a deep ocean current that is channelled onto the continental shelf close to the mouth of the glacier. There is not much sea ice to protect it from the warm water, which seems to be undercutting the ice and lubricating its flow.
. . The Pine Island Glacier alone could raise global sea level by 25cm. That might take decades or a century, but neighbouring glaciers are accelerating too and if the entire region were to lose its ice, the sea would rise by 1.5m worldwide.
Feb 11, 08: Arctic sea ice next summer may shrink below the record low last year, according to a U of Washington climatologist. Ignatius Rigor spoke at the Alaska Forum on the Environment and said global warming combined with natural cyclical changes likely will continue to push ice into the North Atlantic Ocean.
. . The last remnants of thick, old sea ice are dispersing and the unusual weather cycles that contributed to sea ice loss last year are continuing, he said. In 1989, 80% of the ice in the Arctic was at least 10 years old, he said. Today, only about 3% of the ice is that old. New ice melts more quickly, and then open water absorbs more sunlight, warming the seas and making the fall freeze-up come even later, he said. "Have we passed the tipping point?" he said. "It's hard to see how the system may come back."
. . Scientists said that the forecasts were, if anything, too cautious. None foresaw the shrinkage of 2007. "Five of the 10 studies we used projected more sea ice at mid-century than we had this summer", Amstrup said.
. . The day's first word went to a tiny island nation with a big sinking feeling. Leading off the U.N. General Assembly's second day of talks on climate change, Tuvalu issued a cry for help Tuesday on dealing with the impact of global warming on its 10,000 people, who live on nine low-lying coral atolls in the South Pacific being lapped at by rising seas. "I only need to highlight the fact that our highest point above sea level is only four meters to emphasize our vulnerability to the impacts of climate change, especially sea level rise", he said.
. . He was followed by speaker after speaker from small countries who rose to ask the richest nations to pony up tens of billions of dollars a year to help the littler guys adapt. No less than 117 speakers, representing virtually all the world's nations, signed up to take the stage during talks that dragged into the evening. The glacial pace of their speechmaking belied their expressions of urgency and fear that global warming will test the world —-and the U.N-— in ways never before seen. "Climate change has the potential to redraw the face of our planet", said Dr. Janez Podobnik, Slovenia's environment minister who spoke for the European Union. The EU, he said, puts global warming "on the top of its political agenda."
. . The U.N. Development Program said in November that industrialized nations must provide $86 billion a year by 2015 to help the people most vulnerable to more catastrophic floods, droughts and other disasters that scientists fear will accompany warming.
Feb 8, 08: Two scientists have claimed that climate change was not the only cause of the collapse of a 500bn ton ice shelf in Antarctica six years ago. The 200m thick, 3,250 sq km Larsen B shelf broke apart in March 2002.
. . Prof Glasser said the dramatic event was "not as simple as we first thought". He acknowledged that global warming had a major part to play in the collapse, but emphasized that it was only one of a number of contributory factors. Some coral reefs could be protected from the impacts of climate change by an "ocean thermostat", a study says. Researchers suggest that natural processes appear to be regulating sea surface temperatures in a region of the western Pacific Ocean.
. . The study appears to support a theory that natural processes prevent ocean sea surface temperatures exceeding 31C. "In essence, reefs that are already in hot water may be more protected from warming than reefs that are not; this is rare hopeful news for these important ecosystems. We don't know if the models are simply not capturing the processes that cause the thermostat, or if global warming is happening so rapidly that it will overwhelm the thermostat."
Feb 4, 08: A projected drying of the Amazon basin, linked both to logging and to global warming, could set off a dieback of the rainforest. A possible greening of parts of the Sahel and the Sahara, if monsoon rains in West Africa were disrupted, was one of the few positive abrupt shifts identified by the scientists. Even a moderate warming could set off a thaw of Greenland's ice sheet that could then vanish in 300 years --raising sea levels by 6 meters, or 2 meters a century.
. . The report also identified risks such as damage to northern pine forests --widely exploited by the pulp industry-- because of factors such as more frequent fires and vulnerability to pests in warmer, drier conditions.
. . But it played down some other fears, such as of a runaway melt of Siberian permafrost, releasing stores of methane which is a powerful greenhouse gas.
Feb 4, 08: Global warming this century could trigger a runaway thaw of Greenland's ice sheet and other abrupt shifts such as a dieback of the Amazon rainforest, scientists said. "Many of these tipping points could be closer than we thought."
. . They urged governments to be more aware of "tipping points" in nature, tiny shifts that can bring big and almost always damaging changes such as a melt of Arctic summer sea ice or a collapse of the Indian monsoon.
. . "Society may be lulled into a false sense of security by smooth projections of global change", the scientists at British, German and U.S. institutes wrote in a report. "The greatest and clearest threat is to the Arctic with summer sea ice loss likely to occur long before, and potentially contribute to, Greenland ice sheet melt."
Feb 4, 08: Ice caps on the northern plateau of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic have shrunk by more than 50% in the last half century as a result of warming, and are expected to disappear by the middle of the century. Researchers also find tantalizing evidence that ancient tropical eruptions of volcanoes triggered Little Ice Age.
Jan 21, 08: Scientists have found what they say is the first evidence of a volcanic eruption under the Antarctic ice sheet. They believe the volcano erupted about 2,000 years ago, and would have burst through its ice covering, producing a burst of steam and rocky debris. They say it could aid understanding of an ice mass which is likely to play a key role in climate change.
. . In the middle of the area, the rock underneath the ice rises up in the shape of a mountain as much as 1km high. The thickness of ice above suggests the eruption occurred just over 2,200 years ago.
. . "This complicates things. However, it cannot explain the more widespread thinning of West Antarctic glaciers that together are contributing nearly 0.2mm per year to sea level rise."
Jan 5, 08: For 5,000 years, great tongues of ice have spread over the 5km-high slopes of Puncak Jaya, in the remotest reaches of this remote tropical island. Now those glaciers are melting, and Lonnie Thompson must get there before they're gone. To the American glaciologist, the ancient ice is a vanishing "archive" of the story of El Nino, the equatorial phenomenon driving much of the world's climate.
Dec 12, 07: Scientists in the US have presented one of the most dramatic forecasts yet for the disappearance of Arctic sea ice. Their latest modelling studies indicate northern polar waters could be ice-free in summers within just 5-6 years.
. . Summer melting this year reduced the ice cover to 4.13 million sq km, the smallest ever extent in modern times. "Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007. So given that fact, you can argue that may be our projection of 2013 is already too conservative."
. . Professor Maslowski is adamant that models need to incorporate more realistic representations of the way warm water is moving into the Arctic basin from the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
. . It is has become apparent in recent years that the real, observed rate of summer ice melting is now starting to run well ahead of the models. The minimum ice extent reached in September 2007 shattered the previous record for ice withdrawal set in 2005. "The ice is thinning faster than it is shrinking; and some modellers have been assuming the ice was a rather thick slab. "Wieslaw's model is more efficient because it works with data and it takes account of processes that happen internally in the ice."
Dec 11, 07: An already relentless melting of the Arctic greatly accelerated this summer, a warning sign that some scientists worry could mean global warming has passed an ominous tipping point. One even speculated that summer sea ice would be gone in five years.
. . Greenland's ice sheet melted nearly 19 billion tons more than the previous high mark, and the volume of Arctic sea ice at summer's end was half what it was just four years earlier, according to new NASA satellite data.
. . NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally said: "At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions." So scientists have been asking themselves these questions: Was the record melt seen all over the Arctic in 2007 a blip amid relentless and steady warming? Or has everything sped up to a new climate cycle that goes beyond the worst case scenarios presented by computer models?
. . "The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coal mine for climate warming," said Zwally. "Now as a sign of climate warming, the canary has died. It is time to start getting out of the coal mines." It is the burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels that produces carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, responsible for man-made global warming
. . "I don't pay much attention to one year ... but this year the change is so big, particularly in the Arctic sea ice, that you've got to stop and say, 'What is going on here?' You can't look away from what's happening here," said Waleed Abdalati, NASA's chief of cyrospheric sciences. "This is going to be a watershed year."
2007 shattered records for Arctic melt in the following ways:
. . • 552 billion tons of ice melted this summer from the Greenland ice sheet, according to preliminary satellite data to be released by NASA Wednesday. That's 15% more than the annual average summer melt, beating 2005's record.
. . • A record amount of surface ice was lost over Greenland this year, 12% more than the previous worst year, 2005, according to data the University of Colorado released Monday. That's nearly quadruple the amount that melted just 15 years ago. It's an amount of water that could cover Washington, D.C., a half-mile deep, researchers calculated.
. . • The surface area of summer sea ice floating in the Arctic Ocean this summer was nearly 23% below the previous record. The dwindling sea ice already has affected wildlife, with 6,000 walruses coming ashore in northwest Alaska in October for the first time in recorded history. Another first: the Northwest Passage was open to navigation.
. . • Still to be released is NASA data showing the remaining Arctic sea ice to be unusually thin, another record. That makes it more likely to melt in future summers. Combining the shrinking area covered by sea ice with the new thinness of the remaining ice, scientists calculate that the overall volume of ice is half of 2004's total.
. . • Alaska's frozen permafrost is warming, not quite thawing yet. But temperature measurements 66 feet deep in the frozen soil rose nearly four-tenths of a degree from 2006 to 2007, according to measurements from the University of Alaska. While that may not sound like much, "it's very significant", said U of Alaska professor Vladimir Romanovsky.
For nearly the past 30 years, the data pattern of its ice sheet melt has zigzagged. A bad year, like 2005, would be followed by a couple of lesser years. According to that pattern, 2007 shouldn't have been a major melt year, but it was, said Konrad Steffen, of the University of Colorado, which gathered the latest data.
. . NASA scientist James Hansen, the lone-wolf researcher often called the godfather of global warming, will tell scientists and others at a meeting of researchers in San Francisco that in some ways, Earth has hit one of his so-called tipping points, based on Greenland melt data. "We have passed that and some other tipping points in the way that I will define them," Hansen said. "We have not passed a point of no return. We can still roll things back in time — but it is going to require a quick turn in direction."
Dec 11, 07: In 21 countries, mainly in the tropics, more than 90% of protected areas are vulnerable. "We previously assumed that if the land is protected, then the plants and animals living there will persist", said Sandy Andelman, head of CI's Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring network. "That may be wishful thinking."
. . WWF, meanwhile, looked at conditions at the Earth's other climatic extreme --the cold of the Antarctic peninsula. This tendril of land that projects from the Antarctic towards the tip of South America is warming much faster than the global average. According to WWF researchers, sea ice cover has declined by about 40% over the last quarter century.
. . "The research done over the last couple of years is that many penguin populations across Antarctica are in decline, with some dropping as much as 65%", said WWF's director-general Jim Leape. "You are seeing a massive loss of sea ice in important parts of the continent, and that sea ice is crucial to the food web of Antarctica upon which these penguins depend."
Dec 10, 07: Rising temperatures caused ice to melt in Greenland at a record rate this year, climate scientists reported.
. . "The amount of ice lost by Greenland over the last year is the equivalent of two times all the ice in the Alps or a layer of water more than one-half-mile deep covering Washington, D.C", said Konrad Steffen, an Arctic expert at the U of Colorado in Boulder. Greenland is about one-quarter as big as the continental US, and 80% of it is covered by a massive ice sheet.
. . Steffen, who's spent 18 seasons working on the Greenland ice cap, attributed the accelerated melting to an air temperature increase of about 7 degrees F since 1991. 10% more ice melted this year than in 2005, the previous record year. Since 1979, when satellite data over Greenland began, melting has increased by a total of 30", he said.
. . Increases in snowfall thicken the ice at higher elevations in the interior of Greenland, but glaciers around the coast have been thinning and sliding more rapidly toward the sea. The gain in the center is more than offset by the loss around the margins, Steffen said.
. . This acceleration is partly caused by water trickling down through huge tunnels in the ice, known as moulins. The water lubricates the bases of glaciers and speeds their flow toward the sea. "The more lubrication there is under the ice, the faster that ice moves to the coast", Steffen said. "We know the number of moulins is increasing." For example, the massive Jacobshavn glacier on the west coast of Greenland has sped up nearly twofold in the last decade.
. . Data on the recent melting trends were collected by a Defense Department meteorology satellite program that checks the weather for military purposes. In addition, Steffen's team maintains a set of 22 observation posts on the ice cap.
Oct 31, 07: A tiny speck of pebbles found off the northern coast of Greenland could open up a new front in the looming battle for control of the Arctic and the North Pole. The best candidate to date for the world's northernmost point of land --a mythical place sought by explorers for centuries-- was spotted in July.
. . This scrap of land just 40 meters long could extend Danish territory further north and strengthen Copenhagen's claim on the pole. Its discovery comes as countries around the Arctic Ocean --the US, Russia, Canada, Denmark, Norway and Iceland-- are rushing to stake out the Polar Basin's seabed, fishing rights and maritime routes.
. . "This little island could have a wide international significance", said Stefan Talmon, professor of international law at Oxford U in Britain. "With the ice melting, more and more of these islands could emerge and play a role in maritime delimitations", he said.
. . Denmark sent an icebreaker to the Arctic this summer to collect geological data in preparation for its claim to extend its shelf beyond the established 200 nautical miles from Greenland's baseline. If a country can show the seabed is a natural extension of its land territory, it gets the exclusive right to exploit the resources contained in its subsoil. Previously inaccessible oil and gas reserves could be within reach in decades.
. . Russia argues a ridge under the Arctic Ocean makes the pole Russian, even though the coast of Siberia is 2,000 km away. Canada said earlier this month it would map its entire Arctic seabed. It is planning to build a deep-water port for patrol vessels near the eastern entrance of the fabled Northwest Passage, which was ice-free for the first time this summer.
. . All territorial claims depend on whether a feature is a rock or an island. Only an island gives fishing rights and a claim to the seabed around it. To be one, Stray Dog West would need to be a naturally formed area of land recognized as fit for sustained human habitation and remain above sea level at high tide.
. . As it stands just four meters above sea level, it could disappear if the sea rises. Stray Dog West is some 700 km from the North Pole and only 4 km from Greenland's coast. Stray Dog West is a depositional feature --the result of accumulated erosion material and land debris-- not a tectonic feature forged by earthplate movements or collisions. This means it can be bulldozed by moving pack ice.
. . World maps are being redrawn by climate change. Warming Island, a rugged piece of land near the eastern coast of Greenland shaped like three fingers pointing north, was included in this month's revised Oxford U Press Atlas. Schmitt found the ice bridge that connected it to the coastline had melted.
Oct 23, 07: Between the North Sister and Middle Sister in Oregon's Cascade Range, Collier Glacier has advanced and receded for hundreds of thousands of years. But like many glaciers, it is headed in one direction these days: backward. Collier is shrinking faster than most of the 35 glaciers in the state. "Now everything is just in a chaotic shrink", Bishop said.
. . At the glacier's base is a moraine, or a ridge of rocks, deposited by the slowly moving glacier when it was bigger. Today an empty valley fills the space between the ridge and the glacial edge. "This was a full valley in 1906", Bishop said. Since then, it has retreated more than a mile. The shrinking of the glacier started about the same time CO2 emissions started rising.
. . In the late 19th century, many glaciers started to retreat, he said. That shrinking was probably due to natural fluctuations in the atmospheric temperature. But in the last 20 to 30 years, all of the Cascades' glaciers have been shrinking, he said. And because the actions of glaciers reflect temperatures from two decades ago, even if warming trends were to stop today, glaciers would still be shrinking for at least 20 years to come, he said.
Oct 18, 07: The Arctic is being hit by melting ice, hotter air and dying wildlife, according to a US government report on the impact of global warming there. A new wind circulation pattern is blowing more warm air towards the North Pole than in the 20th Century, scientists found. Shrubs are now growing in tundra areas while caribou herds are dwindling in Canada and parts of Alaska. The report stresses that the fate of the Arctic affects the entire planet.
Oct 17, 07: The Arctic is under increasing stress from warming temperatures as shrubs colonize the tundra, changing wildlife habitat and local climate conditions, researchers said. Sea ice fell well below the previous record, caribou are declining in many areas and permafrost is melting, according to the annual update of the State of the Arctic report.
. . Unlike Las Vegas, "what happens in the Arctic actually does not stay in the Arctic." Winter and spring temperatures were all above average throughout the whole Arctic, said James Overland of NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory. If you go back 100 years, it would be warm in one part of the Arctic and cold in another, Overland said. "We're not getting that now." Sea ice cover this year is 23% smaller than the past record low set in 2005 and 39% less than average.
. . The largest declines in caribou are centered over Canada and parts of Alaska. The herds are sensitive to changes in their range and sometimes have problems migrating in changing conditions, meaning that calving occurs before they get to new feeding grounds, resulting in higher mortality. The global goose population has been on the increase, he added, resulting in overgrazing in some areas.
. . The tundra itself is "shrubifying", he said, and the increased shrub cover over many regions affects habitat and local climate, since it tends to absorb more solar radiation.
Oct 16, 07: A new technique to track the extent of Arctic sea ice over the past 1,000 years is being developed by a UK team.
Oct 16, 07: INNSBRUCK, Austria —-home to two Winter Olympics-— is hosting a conference on how to cope with the warm winters and lackluster snowfall caused by global warming. Some 400 people from 20 countries are in the Austrian winter sports mecca for three days of discussions on the future of the Alps. Discussions will focus on eight core themes related to mountains.
Oct 12, 07: A French explorer unveiled plans to fly over the Arctic in an airship to measure the ice cap amid concern at the pace it is melting. Jean-Louis Etienne said his 10,000 km journey will serve as a benchmark.
. . Etienne's expedition will begin in April 2008 in northern Norway and take him over the Barents Sea to Spitzberg. He will then fly over the magnetic North Pole and Beaufort Sea before heading to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, where he is due to land in May.
. . "The airship will allow us to fly over vast areas and it will give our measuring equipment the stability that a helicopter cannot give." Data will be collected using an electromagnetic probe.
Oct 9, 07: In another sign of potential friction in the warming Arctic, Canada has warned that it will step up patrols of the Northwest Passage. Record summer melting of sea-ice has made the passage fully navigable; and immediately escalated a dispute over who controls the route. Canada maintains the waterway that connects the Atlantic with the Pacific lies within its territorial waters. It has backed that up with plans for a new military base in the Arctic. However, the US and other countries claim international rights to use the route for shipping.
. . "It just seemed as if it wasn't going to stop. Normally, towards the end of August, the beginning of September, the melting slows down and stops and we get ready for the coming fall and the refreezing during the winter. But it just kept on going and the concern was, 'Well when is it going to stop this year?' --and ultimately when it did stop, it shattered all previous records."
Oct 8, 07: Thousands of walrus have appeared on Alaska's northwest coast in what conservationists are calling a dramatic consequence of global warming melting the Arctic sea ice. Sea ice cover is in a downward spiral and may have passed the point of no return. "That's what so breathtaking about this", she said. "This has all happened faster than anyone could have predicted. That's why it's so urgent action must be taken."
. . Alaska's walrus, especially breeding females, in summer and fall are usually found on the Arctic ice pack. But the lowest summer ice cap on record put sea ice far north of the outer continental shelf, the shallow, life-rich shelf of ocean bottom in the Bering and Chukchi seas. September sea ice was 39% below the long-term average from 1979 to 2000.
. . Walrus feed on clams, snails and other bottom dwellers. Given the choice between an ice platform over water beyond their 630-foot diving range or gathering spots on shore, thousands of walrus picked Alaska's rocky beaches. "The big question is whether they will be able to find sufficient prey in areas where they are looking."
. . Panic caused by a low-flying airplane, a boat or an approaching polar bear can send a herd rushing to the sea. Young animals can be crushed by adults weighing 2,000 pounds or more.
. . Longer term, biologists fear walrus will suffer nutritional stress if they are concentrated on shoreline rather than spread over thousands of miles of sea ice. Walrus need either ice or land to rest. Unlike seals, they cannot swim indefinitely and must pause after foraging.
. . Walrus have used the edge of the ice pack like a conveyor belt. As the ice edge melts and moves north in spring and summer, sea ice gives calves a platform on which to rest while females dive to feed. There's no conveyor belt for walrus on shore. "If they've got to travel farther, it's going to cost more energy. That's less energy that's available for other functions", Ragen said.
Oct 1, 07: The giant Ayles Ice Island drifting off Canada's northern shores has broken in two --far earlier than expected. In a season of record summer melting in the region, the two chunks have moved rapidly through the water. The original Manhattan-sized berg (16km by five km) broke off the Ayles Ice Shelf in 2005.
. . His conclusion is clear: unlike ice islands which in the past might have lasted in the Arctic Ocean for 50 years or more, this one is destined to be shorter-lived. "Ultimately, the ice island should break up faster because of the warmer temperatures --I'd be surprised if it lasted more than a decade or so."
. . The calving event was the largest in at least the last 25 years. A total of 87.1 sq km of ice was lost in this event The largest piece was 66.4 sq km in area.
Sept 14, 07: The Northwest Passage, the dreamed-of yet historically impassable maritime shortcut between Europe and Asia, has now fully opened up due to record shrinkage of Arctic sea ice, the European Space Agency (ESA) said.
. . Ice retreat in the Arctic had reached record levels since satellite monitoring began in 1978. "There has been a reduction of the ice cover over the last 10 years of about 100 000 sq. km. (38,600 sq. miles) per year on average, so a drop of one million sq. km. (386,000 sq. miles) in just one year is extreme."
Sept 6, 07: Computer predictions of a dramatic decline of sea ice in regions of the Arctic are confirmed by actual observations, according to scientists for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
. . The Seattle-based researchers reviewed 20 computer scenarios of the affects of warming on sea ice used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its assessment report released this year. The researchers compared those models with sea ice observations from 1979 through 1999, rejecting about half because they did not match what satellites showed, said oceanographer James Overland.
. . But using the most reliable models, the NOAA scientists reached the same unhappy conclusion: by 2050, summer sea ice in the Beaufort Sea off Alaska's north coast likely will have diminished by 40% compared to the 1980s. The same is likely for the East Siberian-Chukchi Sea region off northwest Alaska and Russia. In contrast, Canada's Baffin Bay and Labrador showed little predicted change.
. . In the 1980s, sea ice receded 30 to 50 miles each summer off the north coast of Alaska, Overland said. "Now we're talking about 300 to 500 miles north of Alaska", he said of projections for 2050.
. . As of y'day, the center's measurement of sea ice stood at 1.70 million square miles, far below the previous record low for summer ice of 2.05 million square miles recorded Sept. 20, 2005.
. . The situation is dire for polar bears. "They're going to drown, they're going to starve, they're going to resort to cannibalism, they're going to become extinct", she said. As ice recedes, many bears will get stuck on land in summer, where they have virtually no sustainable food source, Siegel said. Some will try and fail to swim to sea ice, she said. Bears that stay on sea ice will find water beyond the continental shelf to be less productive. Females trying to den on land in the fall will face a long swim.
. . Less sea ice also will mean a changing ecosystem for commercial fishermen and marine mammals in the Bering Sea, Overland said. With sea ice present, much of the nutrients produced in the ocean feed simple plankton that bloom and sink to the ocean floor, providing rich habitat for crabs, clams and the mammals that feed off them, including gray whales and walrus.
. . "If you don't have the ice around, the productivity stays up closer to the surface of the ocean", Overland said. "You actually have a change in the whole ecosystem from one that depends on the animals that live on the bottom to one that depends on the animals that live in the water column. So you have winners and losers." That could mean short-term gains for salmon and pollock, he said. But it also could mean that fishermen will have to travel farther north to fish in Alaska's productive waters, and warm-water predators might move north.
Sept 1, 07: An island of ice the size of Manhattan has drifted into a remote channel and jammed itself in. The Ayles Ice Island changed the Arctic map by breaking free from the Canadian coast two years ago. Scientists have been tracking the progress of this monster iceberg amid fears that it could edge west towards oil and gas installations off Alaska.
. . The creation of the island is seen by many scientists as a key indicator of the rapid warming of the Arctic. Ayles Ice Island is vast, measuring about 16km long and five km across.
Aug 23, 07: Climate change... It's a double-edged sword for the Inuit. It's transforming their frozen landscape, melting glaciers and disrupting animal life. The number of hunters in the area has dropped in recent years from nearly 500 to about 200.
. . Since 1995, Greenland's vast ice cap has lost 7% of its mass and 100 meters in height, according to the European Environmental Agency.
Aug 21, 07: Previously unknown islands are appearing as Arctic summer sea ice shrinks to record lows, raising questions about whether global warming is outpacing U.N. projections, experts said. The thaw of glaciers that stretch out to sea around Svalbard has revealed several islands that are not on any maps. Polar bears and seals have also suffered this year on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard because the sea ice they rely on for hunts melted far earlier than normal.
. . The U.N. panel of 2,500 scientists said in February that summer sea ice could almost vanish in the Arctic towards the end of this century. "There may well be an ice-free Arctic by the middle of the century", Christopher Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey, told the seminar, accusing the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of underestimating the melt.
. . Rapley also said the IPCC was "restrained to the point of being seriously misleading" in toning down what he said were risks of a melt of parts of Antarctica, by far the biggest store of ice on the planet that could raise world sea levels.
. . Norway hopes the seminar, with delegates from countries including top greenhouse gas emitters the US and China, may put pressure on governments to agree to make deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
Aug 18, 07: Hundreds of naked people formed a "living sculpture" on Switzerland's Aletsch glacier today, hoping to raise awareness about climate change. [wud all that heat melt it even more?!]
Aug 17, 07: There was less sea ice in the Arctic today than ever before on record, and the melting is continuing, the National Snow and Ice Data Center reported. "Today is a historic day", said Mark Serreze, a senior research scientist at the center. "This is the least sea ice we've ever seen in the satellite record and we have another month left to go in the melt season this year."
. . Scientists began monitoring the extent of Arctic sea ice in the 1970s when satellite images became available. Exposed to direct sun, for example, instead of reflecting 80% of the sunlight, the ocean absorbs 90%.
. . Unusually clear sky conditions have prevailed in the Arctic in June and July, promoting more sunshine at the time when the sun is highest in the sky over the region. "It is very strong evidence that we are starting to see an effect of greenhouse warming", he said.
. . The puzzling thing, he said, is that the melting is actually occurring faster than computer climate models have predicted. Several years ago he would have predicted a complete melt of Arctic sea ice in summer would occur by the year 2070 to 2100, Serreze said. But at the rates now occurring, a complete melt could happen by 2030, he said. There will still be ice in winter, he said, but it could be gone in summer.
Aug 13, 07: Arctic sea ice is expected to retreat to a record low by the end of this summer, scientists have predicted. Measurements made by the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) showed the extent of sea ice on 8 August was almost 30% below the long-term average.
. . Because the region's melting season runs until the middle of September, scientists believe this summer will end with the lowest ice cover on record. Researchers have forecast ice-free summers in the Arctic by 2040.
. . Dr Serreze added that it was very likely that sea ice cover in the polar region was starting to respond to human induced climate change, resulting from a greater concentration of greenhouse gases. "We know that natural climate variability can strongly influence the sea ice, but I think we are starting to see a positive feedback now.
. . Sea ice has a bright surface that reflects 80% of the sunlight. Rather than reflecting sunlight, the bare ocean absorbs 90% of it, causing the waters to warm and increase the rate of melting. Scientists fear that this feedback mechanism will have major consequences for wildlife in the region, not least polar bears, which traverse ice-floes in search of food.
. . On a global scale, the Earth would lose a major reflective surface and so absorb more solar energy, potentially accelerating climatic change across the world.
Aug 10, 07: Glaciers that crown Mexico's tallest mountains and inspired Aztec legends of lost love and a snake god could disappear within a few decades, with scientists pointing to global warming as a cause of their demise.
Aug 9, 07: In another climate change article, U.S. researchers reported that soot from industry and forest fires had a dramatic impact on the Arctic climate, starting around the time of the Industrial Revolution.
. . Industrial pollution brought a seven-fold increase in soot --black carbon-- in Arctic snow during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, scientists at the Desert Research Institute found. Soot, mostly from burning coal, reduces the reflectivity of snow and ice, letting Earth's surface absorb more solar energy and possibly resulting in earlier snow melts and exposure of much darker underlying soil, rock and sea ice. This in turn, led to warming across much of the Arctic region.
. . At its height from 1906 to 1910, estimated warming from soot on Arctic snow was eight times that of the pre-industrial era, the researchers said.
July 24, 07: Rising temperatures in eastern Canada are making it more dangerous for the native Inuit population in the province of Quebec to travel and hunt by snowmobile, and a new study recommends that they return to using the traditional dogsled.
. . A recent report on climate change in Quebec's Arctic region stresses that warming temperatures are forcing the Inuit to rethink how they get around, which is mainly by Skidoo snowmobile. "For the last 10 years or so, we've had winters that are more mild, so ice forms later in autumn and winter", Martin Tremblay, a geographic researcher who led the study, said.
July 18, 07: Greenpeace said today it was looking for volunteers to parade in the nude on an icy Swiss glacier for an environmental campaign about global warming. They want to expose melting glaciers.
July 15, 07: British adventurer and swimmer Lewis Gordon Pugh became the first person to swim in the icy waters of the North Pole, to raise awareness of how global warming is effecting the polar ice cap. Pugh, 37, took 18 minutes and 50 seconds to swim one km.
July 12, 07: Melting sea ice is driving mother polar bears onto dry land to give birth in northern Alaska, U.S. Geological Survey scientists reported. They found that just 37% of polar bear dens were built on sea ice between 1998 and 2004, compared to 62% between 1985 and 1994.
. . "Right now, pregnant females foraging offshore in summer must wait up to a month longer than they did even 10 years ago for new sea ice to form so they can travel to denning areas on land. Alternatively, they must swim ever greater expanses of open water to reach suitable land denning habitat or they must den on ice that may not be stable enough to survive the winter."
. . Eventually, the researchers predicted, the ice will freeze so late that bears will be stranded at sea too far away to reach land safely. Pregnant polar bears must create dens to protect new cubs from the Arctic winter. The edge of the sea ice remains as far as 125 miles offshore in late September and early October. Only a decade ago, the water was frozen almost to the shore by that time.
. . The researchers said they would make their report available to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as it considers the proposed listing of the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. The World Conservation Union or IUCN estimates there are 21,500 to 25,000 polar bears globally. They live only in the area around the North Pole.
Jun 27, 07: An ice sheet in Antarctica that is the world's largest —-with enough water to raise global sea levels by 200 feet-— is relatively stable and poses no immediate threat, according to new research.
. . While studies of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets show they are both at risk from global warming, the East Antarctic ice sheet will "need quite a bit of warming" to be affected.
. . The air over the East Antarctic ice sheet, an ice mass more than 1,875 miles across and up to 2.5 miles thick centered on the South Pole, will remain cold enough to prevent significant melting in the near future. But it eventually may become vulnerable to the effects of rising sea levels driven by the melting of other ice sheets, Mackintosh's team found.
. . The researchers found that from 13,000 to 7,000 years ago, when sea levels rose by more than 330 feet, the East Antarctic ice sheet thinned by 660 feet to 1,150 feet. Rising waters during that period would have lifted the buoyant ice sheet's edges off its rocky base, causing pieces to detach or "calve" and melt. If the sheet experienced such calving again, even small changes could have a significant impact, the researchers said. The study did not predict how much sea levels would have to rise before the sheet's edges started to break away.
Jun 22, 07: A US company plans to dump iron filings into the sea off the Galapagos Islands in an experiment to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. But the plans have alarmed the US government and conservationists. The firm Planktos intends to sell CO2 credits to individuals who want to offset their personal CO2 emissions.
. . But opponents say the dumping of iron filings without a permit is illegal under US and international law. Seeding the oceans with iron filings is known to create plankton blooms that can absorb significant quantities of CO2.
. . But environmentalists say the effects of such an experiment on the Pacific ecosystem have not been properly researched.
Jun 22, 07: Icebergs that break off Antarctica and drift away turn out to be hotspots of life in the cold southern ocean, researchers report. Climate warming has led to an increase in the number of icebergs breaking away from the Antarctic in recent years, and a team of researchers set out to study the impact the giant ice chunks were having on the environment.
. . Turns out, the melting ice also dumps particles scraped off Antarctica into the ocean, providing a pool of nutrients that feed plankton and tiny shrimplike creatures known as krill.
. . They found an increase in life forms surrounding a pair of icebergs they studied. The abundance extended nearly 2 1/2 miles away from the drifting ice. Smith said he was surprised at the amount of sealife surrounding the icebergs, though "there had been anecdotal observations in the past of increased seabird abundance around icebergs."
. . By promoting life surrounding them, the icebergs also may have an impact on reducing the excess CO2 in the atmosphere —-at least somewhat countering the greenhouse warming that helped make them break free in the first place, Smith suggested. "One important consequence of the increased biological productivity is that free-floating icebergs can serve as a route for CO2 drawdown and sequestration of particulate carbon as it sinks into the deep sea."
. . "While the melting of Antarctic ice shelves is contributing to rising sea levels and other climate change dynamics in complex ways, this additional role of removing CO2 from the atmosphere may have implications for global climate models that need to be further studied."
. . Lack of iron is known to limit biological activity in the southern ocean, she said, and "if icebergs are transporting iron-rich minerals to offshore marine settings it is logical that the icebergs are ... helping the base of the food chain, which then can have positive effects all the way up the food chain."
Jun 12, 07: The snows of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania have been diminishing for more than a century but probably not due to global warming, researchers report.
. . While the retreat of glaciers and mountaintop ice in the mid-latitudes --where much of the world's human population lives-- is definitely linked to global climate change, the same cannot be said of Kilimanjaro, the researchers wrote. Kilimanjaro's icy top, which provided the title for an iconic short story by Ernest Hemingway, has been waning for more than a century.
. . "It is certainly possible that the icecap has come and gone many times over hundreds of thousands of years", Mote, a climatologist, said. "But for temperate glaciers, there is ample evidence that they are shrinking, in part because of warming from greenhouse gases."
. . Unlike mid-latitude glaciers, which are warmed and melted by surrounding air in the summer, the disappearance of Kilimanjaro's ice is driven by solar radiation, since the air around it is rarely above freezing, they wrote.
. . Kilimanjaro, an extinct volcano near Tanzania's border with Kenya, is the highest peak in Africa at 5,963 meters and attracts hordes of tourists and climbers for its spectacular views.
. . The researchers attributed the ice decline to complex interacting factors, including the vertical shape of the ice's edge, which allows it to shrink but not expand. Decreased snowfall, which reduces ice buildup and determines how much energy the ice absorbs, also plays a role.
. . Much of Kilimanjaro's ice is vanishing by sublimation --where ice at very low temperatures converts straight to water vapor without going through a watery phase-- rather than by melting, the scientists said.
Jun 12, 07: Even Canada's thinly populated Arctic regions can play a role in curbing global warming, by reducing soot from dirty, old cooking stoves which are blackening snow and making it melt faster.
. . It's one problem on a list of many outlined by researchers at the universities of California and Colorado. They urged Canadians to filter smoke stacks, reduce ship traffic and burn fuels out in their entirety to minimize dirty waste.
. . Zender said average Arctic temperatures have risen by 1.6 degrees C since the late 1700s, with filthy snow accounting for a degree of that alone. "For the next 20 years, it's crucial for the Northern polar regions", he said. "The key to averting massive climate change ... is to preserve the summer pack and sea ice."
. . "New shipping lanes are going to produce sources of some of the dirtiest soot because of their diesel engines ... it's going to push an already vulnerable region past its tipping point."
Jun 7, 07: Global warming will melt most Andean glaciers in the next 30 years, scientists say, threatening the livelihood of millions of people who depend on them for drinking water, farming and power generation.
. . Small glaciers are scattered across the Andes and have for long been a crucial source of fresh water in Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru, thawing in summer months and replenishing themselves in winter. But global warming has driven them into retreat.
. . The glacier on Bolivia's Chacaltaya mountain --which means "cold road" in the local Aymara language-- used to be the world's highest ski resort at 5km above sea level. But the glacier is now only 3M thick on average, down from 16M in 1998, and glaciologist Edson Ramirez says it will disappear this year or next.
. . "At least 35% of the drinking water comes from melting glaciers, and about 40% of the electricity", said Oscar Paz, the head of the Bolivian Climate Change Panel, a government task force.
. . Water is already scarce in El Alto, a sprawling lower-class satellite city north of the country's administrative capital La Paz. Almost 1 million people live in El Alto and most homes lack running water.
. . Water needs will only increase in coming years with the population in the La Paz region expected to double by 2050. Ecuador's capital Quito, with 1.5 million people, and the Peruvian capital Lima, with 8 million people, also rely on melting glaciers for water and energy supplies.
. . About 80% of the Andean glaciers are similar in size to Chacaltaya at under 1 square kilometer, and experts say they are similarly doomed.
Jun 6, 07: Satellite data confirms glaciers on the Antarctic Peninsula are flowing faster. British Antarctic Survey (BAS) scientists used Europe's ERS-1 and -2 spacecraft to track the flow rate of over 300 "ice rivers". They found a 12% increase in the speed of the glaciers over the period from 1993 to 2003.
. . "The Antarctic Peninsula has experienced some of the fastest warming on Earth, nearly 3C over the last half-century. 87% of its glaciers have been retreating during this period and now we see these glaciers are also speeding up. This turns into a positive loop", explained Dr Pritchard. "They thin a bit, and they flow faster because of that; and then because they are flowing faster, they discharge more ice; and that just makes them thin more and flow faster again --so they get into a cycle."
. . The BAS work has echoes in Greenland where surface melt waters are thought to be draining to the underside of landed ice, lubricating its movement towards the ocean.
. . And elsewhere on the Antarctic Peninsula, too, it has been shown that the removal of floating ice shelves will speed up the flow into the ocean of the previously bounded ice streams behind. When all these positive accelerations are taken into account, they are almost certain to make the current IPCC estimates look conservative. Recent satellite altimetry studies have shown global sea levels to be rising by about 3mm a year.
Jun 2, 07: Melting glaciers, ice sheets and snow cover could speed the rate at which the planet heats up, causing rising sea levels, flooding and water shortages that impact as many as 40 percent of the world's population, a U.N. report said. Even though much of the ice is in remote areas, such as polar regions and Greenland, the impact will be felt worldwide, U.N. Environment Program executive director Achim Steiner said.
. . "The report underlines that the fate of the world's snowy and icy places in a climatically challenged world should be cause for concern in every ministry, boardroom and living room across the world", Steiner said.
. . The report was released in the Norwegian Arctic city of Tromsoe, which is hosting the main international celebrations of World Environment Day under the theme "Melting ice — a hot topic?" It builds on a series of reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released earlier this year.
Jun 1, 07: An earth sciences professor at Ohio State U was named to receive a National Medal of Science from the White House, the university announced. Lonnie Thompson, a glaciologist, received the medal for his work providing evidence of global climate change.
. . Thompson has worked for nearly three decades, leading more than 50 research expeditions to ice caps and glaciers on five continents, the university said. His work has included retrieving ice cores, some dating back more than 750,000 years.
. . Refrigerated storage rooms at the university house more than four miles of the 10-cm-thick cores. Thompson and his colleagues study dust, chlorine, sulfate and oxygen to determine past droughts, monsoons, volcanic eruptions and temperature records. His work has shown that the last 50 years marked the warmest period in recorded history, the university said.
May 30, 07: Accelerated glacier melting in the mountains of Tibet could choke off water sources vital for large parts of China, the environmental group Greenpeace said, warning of a chain-reaction of damage from global warming. Water from the mountain region feeds the Yellow, Yangtze and other rivers that feed hundreds of millions of people across China and South Asia.
. . The environmental group cited one forecast that 80% of the glacial area in Tibet and surrounding parts could disappear by 2035. But recent studies on global warming and the region reflect uncertainty about how quickly glaciers will melt, how rain and snowfall will be affected, and what the consequences may be. Wu Shaohong of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has predicted that glaciers on the Qinghai-Tibet plateau could plummet from 500,000 square km in 1995 to 100,000 square km by 2030.
. . Increased evaporation and accumulation in unstable glacier lakes were making water flows less predictable and more dangerous. "Now the winter is as hot as summer. The weather change is obvious", a Tibetan monk who has lived on the lower slopes of Everest for two decades told the Greenpeace team in a video they showed. Multiplying pools of water accumulating from melted glaciers were building up and then bursting, endangering people living downstream.
University Center of Svalbard professor Carl Egede Boggild said Greenland's melting rate could be as high as 80 cubic miles per year, not 51.
May 22, 07: Scientists in the Arctic have just carried out the first research on a huge iceberg the size of Manhattan. Some 16km long and 5km wide, Ayles Ice Island broke away from the Canadian Arctic coast in 2005, but has only recently been identified.
. . Researchers have now landed on the giant berg with a BBC team and planted a tracking beacon on its surface. This will allow the island's progress to be monitored as currents push it around the Arctic Ocean.
. . For 3,000 years, this colossal block of ice was securely fixed to the coast as part of the Ayles Ice Shelf --but now it is drifting free. Its current location is about 600km from the North Pole, in what is one of the fastest warming regions on Earth.
. . The average of thickness of the ice was 42-45m --the height of a 10-story building. This was slightly thicker than expected. One implication is that the island is may prove even more durable than predicted --the sheer weight of ice estimated at two billion tons may take longer to melt than initially thought.
. . When the ice shelf broke away, the rupture registered with the force of a small earthquake."
. . The records show that this region of the Arctic --the northern coast of Ellesmere Island-- has lost 90% of its ice shelves in the past century. The expectation is that the five remaining ice shelves here could also break away. The effect already is that the map of the Arctic will have to be redrawn.
May 3, 07: Dr. Stroeve's team found that since 1953 the area of sea ice in September has declined at an average rate of 7.8% per decade. Computer climate simulations of the same period had an average rate of ice loss of 2.5% per decade.
Apr 31, 07: The Arctic ice cap is melting much faster than expected and is now about 30 years ahead of predictions made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.S. ice expert said. This means the ocean at the top of the world could be free or nearly free of summer ice by 2020, three decades sooner than the global panel's gloomiest forecast of 2050.
. . No ice on the Arctic Ocean during summer would be a major spur to global warming, said Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the National Snow and Ice Center in Colorado. "Right now ... the Arctic helps keep the Earth cool. Without that Arctic ice, or with much less of it, the Earth will warm much faster." That is because the ice reflects light and heat.
. . Scambos and co-authors of the study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, used satellite data and visual confirmation of Arctic ice to reach their conclusions, a far different picture than that obtained from computer models used by the scientists of the intergovernmental panel.
. . He discounted the notion that the sharp warming trend in the Arctic might be due to natural climate cycles. "There aren't many periods in history that are this dramatic in terms of natural variability", Scambos said. He said he had no doubt that this was caused in large part by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which he said was the only thing capable of changing Earth on such a large scale over so many latitudes.
. . Asked what could fix the problem --the topic of a new report by the intergovernmental panel-- Scambos said a large volcanic eruption might hold Arctic ice melting at bay for a few years. But he saw a continued warm-up as inevitable in the coming decades. "We just barely now, I think, have enough time and enough collective will to be able to get through this century in good shape, but it means we have to start acting now and in a big way."
Apr 26, 07: A Norwegian glacier has shrunk on an island 1,000 km from the North Pole, a usually frozen fjord is ice-free and snow bunting birds have migrated back early in possible signs of global warming.
. . "This glacier is dying", guide Eirik Karlsen said on a visit to a tunnel through the ice left by last summer's melt water cascading through the heart of the fast-retreating 3 km long glacier above the village of Longyearbyen. The tunnel, big enough to walk along with ice stalactites hanging from the roof, snakes its way 15 meters below the surface of the Longyearbyen Glacier and shows that huge volumes of water flowed down towards the valley in 2006.
. . The lowest temperature in the past winter had been about -25 degrees Celsius (-13 F), against a more normal -30.
. . Snow buntings, which arrive from Siberia at the end of the winter, turned up about a week earlier than normal. Little auks also migrated to the islands early, residents say.
. . People have been little affected by the melt. The main business is a coal mine and food is imported from the Norwegian mainland to the south. Buildings are already built on high stilts to protect against any thaw of permafrost.
. . The Norwegian Polar Institute says that a melt of glaciers in western Svalbard, such as Longyearbyen glacier, has clearly accelerated in recent years.
Apr 23, 07: Global warming could wipe out large areas of glaciers in the Himalayas and surrounding highlands, threatening livelihoods across much of Asia, climate scientists said in Beijing.
. . One author of a benchmark U.N. report on climate change said more rapid melting could severely disrupt river flows and rainfall patterns across Asia. "If the rate of temperature rises does not change, glaciers on the Qinghai-Tibet plateau will rapidly shrink, perhaps from 500,000 square km in 1995 to 100,000 square km in 2030", Wu Shaohong of the Chinese Academy of Sciences told a news conference. Uncertainty surrounds how fast global warming might shrink glaciers, Wu told reporters after the briefing to explain forecasts issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) earlier this month.
. . Glaciers across the Himalayas and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau are a major source for rivers such as the Yangtze in China, the Mekong in Indochina and the Ganges in India.
. . Another senior Chinese climate scientist, Qin Dahe, gave a lower estimate, saying that about one-quarter of glaciers in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau could melt away by mid-century. But even using conservative forecasts, the experts said the disappearance of glaciers could imperil rain patterns, river flows and farming across Asia. Glacier-fed rivers could swell as the ice melts but then dry out as the ice disappears.
. . A top Indian climate expert said South Asia would also be threatened if glacier-fed rivers dried up. "That is the region that is really the granary of South Asia", said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, referring to the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, which relies on waters from the mountains. Pachauri said underground water supplies would also be at risk from melting glaciers.
Apr 17, 07: A fresh assessment suggests the famous ice fields on Africa's tallest mountain will be around for decades yet. Recent concerns that climate warming would rob Mount Kilimanjaro of all its glaciers within 20 years are overly pessimistic, say Austrian scientists.
. . Their weather station data and modelling work indicate the tropical ice should last well beyond 2040. Precipitation and not temperature is the key to the white peak's future, the U of Innsbruck-led team says.
Mar 28, 07: One in 10 people in the world, mostly in Asia, live in coastal areas at risk from rising seas and more powerful storms that may be caused by global warming, an international study showed.
Mar 28, 07: A Texas-sized piece of the Antarctic ice sheet is thinning, possibly due to global warming, and could cause the world's oceans to rise significantly, polar ice experts said today.
. . They said "surprisingly rapid changes" were occurring in Antarctica's Amundsen Sea Embayment, which faces the southern Pacific Ocean, but that more study was needed to know how fast it was melting and how much it could cause the sea level to rise.
. . The warning came in a joint statement issued at the end of a conference of U.S. and European polar ice experts at the U of Texas in Austin. The scientists blamed the melting ice on changing winds around Antarctica that they said were causing warmer waters to flow beneath ice shelves. The wind change, they said, appeared to be the result of several factors, including global warming, ozone depletion in the atmosphere and natural variability.
. . The thinning in the 3.2 km thick ice shelf is being observed mostly from satellites, but it is not known how much ice has been lost because data is difficult to obtain on the remote ice shelves, they said. Study is focusing on the Amundsen Sea Embayment because it has been melting quickly and holds enough water to raise world sea levels six meters, or close to 20 feet, the scientists said. Other parts of the continent also were losing ice, he said, but generally not as quickly.
Mar 26, 07: Barren and uninhabited, Hans Island is very hard to find on a map. Yet these days the Frisbee-shaped rock in the Arctic is much in demand — so much so that Canada and Denmark have both staked their claim to it with flags and warships. The reason: an international race for oil, fish, diamonds and shipping routes, accelerated by the impact of global warming on Earth's frozen north.
. . Some see a lucrative silver lining of riches waiting to be snatched from the deep, and the prospect of timesaving sea lanes that could transform the shipping industry the way the Suez Canal did in the 19th century. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the Arctic has as much as 25% of the world's undiscovered oil and gas. Moscow reportedly sees the potential of minerals in its slice of the Arctic sector approaching $2 trillion. All this has pushed governments and businesses into a scramble for sovereignty over these suddenly priceless seas.
. . The Northwest Passage could open through the channels of Canada's Arctic islands and shorten the voyage from Europe to the Far East. And that's where Hans Island, at the entrance to the Northwest Passage, starts to matter. The half-square-mile rock, just one-seventh the size of New York's Central Park, is wedged between Canada's Ellesmere Island and Danish-ruled Greenland, and for more than 20 years has been a subject of unusually bitter exchanges between the two
NATO allies.
. . Just a few years ago, reports said it would take 100 years for the ice to melt, but recent studies say it could happen in 10-15 years, and the US, Canada, Russia, Denmark and Norway have been rushing to stake their claims in the Arctic.
. . The Arctic melt has also been intensifying competition over dwindling fishing stocks. Fish stocks essential to some regions appear to be moving to colder waters, and thus into another country's fishing grounds. Russian and Norwegian fishermen already report catching salmon much farther north than is normal.
Mar 23, 07: Rising sea levels and melting polar ice-sheets are at upper limits of projections, leaving some human population centers already unable to cope, top world scientists say as they analyze latest satellite data.
. . A UN report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in February projected sea level gains of 18-59 cm this century from temperature rises of 1.8-4.0 C. Past this level, parts of the Antarctic and Greenland would approach a virtually irreversible melting that would produce sea level rises of meters, he said.
. . There has been no repeat in the Antarctic of the 2002 break-up of part of the Larsen ice shelf that created a 500 billion ton iceberg as big as Luxembourg. But the Antarctic Peninsula is warming faster than anywhere else on Earth, and glaciers are in massive retreat. "There have been doomsday scenarios that west Antarctica could collapse quite quickly. And there's six meters of sea level in west Antarctica", says Tas van Ommen, a glaciologist.
. . But even in east Antarctica, which is insulated from global warming by extreme cold temperatures and high-altitudes, new info shows the height of the Tottenham Glacier near Casey Base has fallen by 10 meters over 15-16 years.
. . Scientists say massive glacier retreat at Heard Island, 1,000 km north of Antarctica, is an example of how fringe areas of the polar region are melting.
. . Every meter of sea level rise causes an inland recession of around 100 meters and more erosion occurs with every storm.
Mar 14, 07: The consequences of climate change at the poles affect the whole world, said Ross Virginia, professor of environmental studies at New Hampshire's Dartmouth College and one of the organizers of a summit on Arctic science this week that will focus on global warming.
. . The world is not warming by the same amount everywhere, Virginia said. Most of the warming takes place around the equator, and the planet's forces keep trying to distribute that heat northward and southward through ocean and air currents. And while the tropics are warming significantly, the effects of this heating are not nearly as dramatic as what happens at the poles.
. . It's the fourth such polar year --the first was in 1882-83, when the poles were largely unexplored-- but unlike previous ones, which dealt with exploration and the geophysical properties of the Arctic and Antarctica, this event takes global climate change as one of its main themes.
Mar 11, 07: Though the average hiker wouldn’t notice, the Alps and other mountain ranges have experienced a gradual growth spurt over the past century or so thanks to the melting of the glaciers atop them. For thousands of years, the weight of these glaciers has pushed against the Earth’s surface, causing it to depress. As the glaciers melt, this weight is lifting, and the surface slowly is springing back.
Feb 27, 07: Are we really heading for an ice-free Arctic? More than 50,000 researchers hope to find an answer during a massive study of how global warming and other phenomena are changing the coldest parts of the Earth —-and what that means for the rest of it.
. . Scientists formally kicked off the International Polar Year today, the biggest such project in 50 years. It is unifying researchers from 63 nations in 228 studies to monitor the health of the polar regions, using icebreakers, satellites and submarines. The project ends in March 2009.
. . The Antarctic's lakes and mountains —-some trapped under about 5km of ice for more than 35 million years-— will be sounded. Using telescopes, balloons and spacecraft, scientists at the poles will investigate plasma and magnetic fields kicked up by the sun. Anthropologists also are planning to study the culture and politics of some of the Arctic's 4 million inhabitants. Others will see how reindeer fare when warmer weather damages lichen pastures.
Feb 27, 07: Ice shelves form when creeping glaciers reach the continent’s coast and begin to float on the ocean. They usually lose mass via icebergs that calve off and float out to sea gradually, but the Larsen A and B shelves both suddenly and surprisingly collapsed. Since 1974, a total of 13,500 square kilometers (about half the size of New Jersey) of ice shelves have disintegrated -—a phenomenon linked to global warming, as temps have risen faster in Antarctica than anywhere else in world.
. . The expedition also found scours created by icebergs that calved from the ice sheets and ran aground on the sea bed, destroying the life in the area, but the damage wasn’t as bad as expected.
Feb 25, 07: The collapse of two ice shelves in Antarctica has exposed an exquisite seabed ecosystem, including species of crustaceans and marine anemones that had never been identified, researchers said. In 1992, the so-called Larsen A ice shelf disintegrated, and in 2002, the Larsen B followed suit, creating the most massive icebergs ever seen.
. . The insight into Antarctica's hidden marine world came from the breakup of the Larsen A and B ice shelves, 12 and five years ago respectively, that later formed huge icebergs. Their collapse laid bare a 10,000-square-kilometer portion of the sea bed --an area almost the size of Jamaica-- that had been roofed by ice for millennia.
. . The team of 52 scientists from 14 countries collected around 1,000 species, some of which are believed to be new to science, and took what they describe as "brilliant" images of unfamiliar creatures.
. . Parts of the Antarctic coast are being hit by global warming at a far greater rate than other parts of the world. Local temperatures at the Larsen shelves have risen by 2.5 C since the 1940s.
Feb 26, 07: More than 50,000 scientists from 63 nations turned their attention to the world's poles today to measure the effects of climate change, using icebreakers, satellites and submarines to study everything from the effect of solar radiation on the polar atmosphere to the exotic marine life swimming beneath the Antarctic ice.
. . The International Polar Year unifies 228 research projects under a single umbrella with the aim of monitoring the health of the Earth's polar regions and gauging the impact of global warming. The largest international research program in 50 years, the project officially begins March 1 and ends in 2009 — to allow each pole to run through a full summer and winter.
. . "Global warming is the most challenging problem that our civilization has faced", Britain's chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, said in a video played before the event's launch. He called the melting of polar ice "the canary in the coal mine for global warming."
. . The year is being sponsored by the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization and the International Council for Science. About $1.5 billion has been earmarked for the year's projects by various national exploration agencies, but most of the money comes from pre-existing polar research budgets.
. . Besides yielding a more complete picture of the impact of global warming, the cooperation will help tackle polar science's most vexing problems, such as the challenge of trying to quantify the amount of fresh water leaking out from underneath ice sheets in Antarctica. The melting — which is distinct from the break up of glaciers — has alarmed climate scientists because it takes place beneath the ice and is difficult to measure.
. . "We are now on an unsustainable path", said Corinne Le Quere, a professor at the U of East Anglia in Norwich, England. "By seeing the changes as they occur in the region where they will be occurring the fastest, the International Polar Year will provide blinding evidence of the human impact on this planet."
Feb 27, 07: The rising temperature of Earth is causing water sources such as glaciers and lakes to rapidly retreat, according to, among others, Steven Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and one of the leading scientific figures trying to get more research funding for alternative energy.
. . The effects of declining water supplies will be noticeable and harsh, according to Chu, who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997. Some effects can already be seen, he said. "The Yellow River is now running dry in summertime", Chu said. The Yellow River is fed by glacier and snowmelt from the Himalayas, which is declining. A huge portion of the world's population gets water from the Himalayas, so this is not a good sign for other areas as well.
. . In the US, the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains in California and Nevada is expected to decline by 30% to 70% by 2100, he said. If it declines by 20%, people will be told to stop watering their lawns or flushing toilets often. A decline of about 50% or greater could rewrite the demographics of California. And a massive decline in the snowpack could cause a collapse of the agriculture industry, prompting a migration out of the state
. . Snow may actually increase in some mountain ranges and parts of the world. Many expect that dry regions will become drier, while wet regions will become rainier. Warming, however, will prevent this extra rain and snow from getting stored in mountains, he said. Thus, a lot of it will run off before it can be used.
The Antarctic ice sheet is up to 4.8 km thick in places and it holds 90% of the world's fresh water. It is also crucial to the circulation of the world's ocean currents and therefore to planetary air circulation.
Feb 16, 06: The disappearance of a glacier high in the Andes could provide the clearest evidence yet of global climate change. The Peruvian Qori Kalis glacier could vanish in just five years, climatologist Lonnie Thompson predicts. The fragile sliver of ice is one of many dripping from the Quelccaya Ice Cap, the largest tropical body of ice. "In the first 10 years, we observed the glacier it was retreating 6m every year", he said. "In the last few years, it has started retreating 60m every year --a 10-fold increase." As the glacier has shrunk, it has exposed ancient plants that have not seen the light of day for 5,000 years, showing the current retreat exceeds anything seen before in that timeframe.
. . As the ice melts, producing a lot of water, the local populations become reliant on it for agriculture, and hydroelectricity. But when the glaciers are gone, so too is the water.
Jan 29, 07: Mountain glaciers are shrinking three times faster than they were in the 1980s, scientists have announced. The World Glacier Monitoring Service, which continuously studies a sample of 30 glaciers around the world, says the acceleration is due to climate change. They continuously study a set of 30 mountain glaciers in different parts of the world.
. . "With the scenarios predicted, we will enter conditions which we have not seen in the past 10,000 years, and perhaps conditions which mankind has never experienced."
Jan 4, 07: Researchers from Ohio State University have developed a radar to reveal views of land beneath polar ice. Their first tests of this new radar, which helps them to catch 3-D images of the ground under the ice, took place in May 2006. The next images will be shot in April 2007.
. . Earth's ice sheets cover roughly 15% of the planet. Earth's poles have been covered in ice for 2.7 million years. Scientists suspect that, just as the ice surface has changed over that time, a different world has evolved underneath.
. . The Global Ice Sheet Mapping Orbiter (GISMO) made the first effectively 3D image of the ground —-in a strip about a mile wide, 2km beneath the ice. They were able to do so because GISMO features multiple, electronically steerable antennas which operate while the airplane is flying.
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