Last January, a study in Nature Climate Change showed the world's glaciers are the smallest they've been in human history, revealing radiocarbon material that hasn't been exposed for 40,000 years. Now, new research published in Nature quantifies how much the world's lost glaciers have contributed to rising sea levels. From …
Old soil carbon (C) respired to the atmosphere as a result of permafrost thaw has the potential to become a large positive feedback to climate change. As permafrost thaws, quantifying old soil contributions to ecosystem respiration (Reco) and understanding how these contributions change with warming is necessary to estimate the …
The Arctic is warming roughly twice as fast as the global average. If greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase at current rates, this warming will lead to the widespread thawing of permafrost and the release of hundreds of billions of tonnes of CO2 and billions of tonnes of CH4 into …
The indigenous people of Greenland, the Inuit, have lived for a long time in the extreme conditions of the Arctic, including low annual temperatures, and with a specialized diet rich in protein and fatty acids, particularly omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs). A scan of Inuit genomes for signatures of adaptation …
MIAMI – Sea levels are rising around the world, and the latest satellite data suggest 3 feet (1 meter) or more is unavoidable in the next 100 to 200 years, NASA scientists said Wednesday. Ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are melting faster than ever, and oceans are warming and …
These "before" and "after" images were acquired by the US space agency's Landsat observer Scientists are studying a big mass of ice that has broken off the Jakobshavn Glacier in Greenland. They say the 12.4km sq section is among the largest ever witnessed to come away from the ice stream's …
Large amounts of methane (CH4) are known to be emitted from permafrost environments during the autumn freeze-in, but the specific soil conditions leading up to these bursts are unclear. Therefore, we used an ultrawide band ground-penetrating radar in Northeast Greenland in autumn 2009 to estimate the volumetric composition inside the …
Albedo modification (AM) is sometimes characterized as a potential means of avoiding climate threshold responses, including large-scale ice sheet mass loss. Previous work has investigated the effects of AM on total sea-level rise over the present century, as well as AM's ability to reduce long-term (Gt103 yr) contributions to sea-level …
Volcanic eruptions contribute to climate variability, but quantifying these contributions has been limited by inconsistencies in the timing of atmospheric volcanic aerosol loading determined from ice cores and subsequent cooling from climate proxies such as tree rings. Here we resolve these inconsistencies and show that large eruptions in the tropics …
Greenland, one of the largest ice sheets in the world, is melting. In fact, it is melting ahead of schedule as the world warms. Scientists are working hard to deepen their understanding of this ice sheet’s behavior so that we can predict how fast and how much of the ice …
The air–sea transfer of heat and fresh water plays a critical role in the global climate system. This is particularly true for the Greenland and Iceland seas, where these fluxes drive ocean convection that contributes to Denmark Strait overflow water, the densest component of the lower limb of the Atlantic …
Water-driven fracture propagation beneath supraglacial lakes rapidly transports large volumes of surface meltwater to the base of the Greenland Ice Sheet. These drainage events drive transient ice-sheet acceleration and establish conduits for additional surface-to-bed meltwater transport for the remainder of the melt season. Although it is well established that cracks …
Scientists were baffled last year after meltwater lakes atop Greenland's ice sheet suddenly drained out at rates rivaling Niagara Falls. Now a team of U.S. researchers says it has figured out the bizarre phenomenon and that could help them forecast global sea-level rise. Vertical shafts in the ice sheet, called …
Greenland seeks to expand its energy and minerals industries to secure the revenues to gain full independence from Denmark. The 2014 oil price crash hit oil exploration hard, bringing disappointment to the local oil industry but relief to global environmentalists. Poor public consultation on mining projects and the lifting of …
Sea level rise sped up over the last two decades rather than slowing down as previously thought, according to new research. Records from tide gauges and satellites have shown sea level rise slowing slightly over the past 20 years. But as the ice sheets of West Antarctica and Greenland shed …
Fjords from Alaska to Norway soak up potentially damaging carbon from the atmosphere, making the steep-sided inlets an overlooked natural ally in offsetting man-made climate change, a study showed on Monday. Fjords cover only 0.1 percent of the world's ocean surface but account for 11 percent of the organic carbon …
A new study using evidence from a highly detailed ice core from West Antarctica shows a consistent link between abrupt temperature changes on Greenland and Antarctica during the last ice age, giving scientists a clearer picture of the link between climate in the northern and southern hemispheres. Greenland climate during …
Greenland is melting, so what does this mean for the future? In order to find out, a team of scientists looked to the past and quantified how the Greenland Ice Sheet reacted to a warm period that occurred 8,000 to 5,000 years ago. Although rising global sea-levels will be an …
Providing a vital clue to the future of Greenland, scientists have measured how the island's ice sheet reacted to a warm period 8,000 to 5,000 years ago when the temperatures were two to four degrees Celsius warmer than present. While the world is gearing up for a rising global sea …
Rising temperatures are causing Greenland's meltwater lakes to drain at a dramatic rate, disappearing in a matter of just a few weeks, according to a new study. One of the sub-glacial lakes once held about 6.7 billion gallons of water, only to be completely emptied in a single season. The …
In a warming climate, surface meltwater production on large ice sheets is expected to increase. If this water is delivered to the ice sheet base it may have important consequences for ice dynamics. For example, basal water distributed in a diffuse network can decrease basal friction and accelerate ice flow, …
