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 …
As the Earth warms and glaciers all over the world begin to melt, researchers and public policy experts have focused largely on how all of that extra water will contribute to sea level rise. But another impact lurking in that inevitable scenario is carbon. More specifically, what happens to all …
Global sea levels are rising significantly faster than earlier thought, according to a new Harvard study. The study, co-authored by Carling Hay and Eric Morrow, of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences (EPS), shows that previous estimates of global sea-level rise from 1900-1990 had been over-estimated by as much …
WASHINGTON – The world’s oceans are now rising at a pace far faster than they did in the past, a new study says. The study found that for much of the 20th century — until about 1990 — sea level was about 30 percent less than earlier research had figured. …
We present ice velocities observed with global positioning systems and TerraSAR-X/TanDEM-X in a land-terminating region of the southwest Greenland ice sheet (GrIS) during the melt year 2012–2013, to examine the spatial pattern of seasonal and annual ice motion. We find that while spatial variability in the configuration of the subglacial …
Global climate and the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) are correlated over recent glacial cycles. The combination of processes responsible for a rise in atmospheric CO2 at the last glacial termination1, 3 (23,000 to 9,000 years ago), however, remains uncertain. Establishing the timing and rate of CO2 changes in …
Research finds 20cm rise since start of 20th century, caused by global warming and the melting of polar ice, is unprecedented. The rise in sea levels seen over the past century is unmatched by any period in the past 6,000 years, according to a lengthy analysis of historical sea level …
A new study has revealed that despite its apparent stability, the massive ice sheet covering most of Greenland is more sensitive to climate change than earlier estimates have suggested. The scientists at the University of Cambridge said that this could accelerate the rising sea levels that threaten coastal communities worldwide. …
It may cover a staggering 656,650 square miles (1.7 million square km), but the Greenland Ice Sheet's vast expanse is more vulnerable to the effects of climate change than previously thought. Researchers have developed a model revealing that despite the sheet's size and stability, the surface beneath it makes it …
German researchers have established the height of the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps with greater precision than ever before. The new maps they have produced show that the ice is melting at an unprecedented rate. The maps, produced with a satellite-mounted instrument, have elevation accuracies to within a few metres. …
Greenland and Antarctica are home to the two largest ice sheets in the world, and a new report released Wednesday says that they are contributing to sea level rise twice as much as they were just five years ago. Using the European Space Agency's CryoSat 2 satellite, the Alfred Wegener …
A new assessment from Europe's CryoSat spacecraft shows Greenland to be losing about 375 cu km of ice each year. Added to the discharges coming from Antarctica, it means Earth's two big ice sheets are now dumping roughly 500 cu km of ice in the oceans annually. "The contribution of …
This study focuses on the present-day surface elevation of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Based on 3 years of CryoSat-2 data acquisition we derived new elevation models (DEMs) as well as elevation change maps and volume change estimates for both ice sheets. Here we present the new DEMs and …
Varying levels of boreal summer insolation and associated Earth system feedbacks led to differing climate and ice-sheet states during late-Quaternary interglaciations. In particular, Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 11 was an exceptionally long interglaciation and potentially had a global mean sea level 6 to 13 metres above the present level around …
Climate change is causing sea levels to rise in the country as well as changing coastlines, say experts. “Land in and around Diamond Harbour, near the southern suburbs of Kolkata, is sinking and sea levels have risen by about 50 centimetres in the last 100 years,” said Prof Govindaswamy Bala …
Through an examination of shallow ice cores covering a wide area of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS), we show that the same mechanism drove two widespread melt events that occurred over 100 years apart, in 1889 and 2012. We found that black carbon from forest fires and rising temperatures combined …
Forest fires and global warming caused an extreme melt of Greenland's ice in 2012, according to a study on Monday that said such thaws may happen almost yearly by 2100, threatening the survival of the entire ice sheet. Clouds of soot from forest blazes in Siberia and North America dumped …
VANCOUVER: The mountains of British Columbia cradle glaciers in west Canada are in rapid retreat, which has become a major climate change issue, a media report said, citing an American state-of-the union report on climate change. "Most glaciers in Alaska and British Columbia are shrinking substantially," Xinhua quoted The Canadian …
Researchers have said that Greenland's icy reaches are far more vulnerable to warm ocean waters from climate change than had been thought. The bedrock canyons sit well below sea level, meaning that as subtropical Atlantic waters hit the fronts of hundreds of glaciers, those edges will erode much further than …
Part of East Antarctica is more vulnerable than expected to a thaw that could trigger an unstoppable slide of ice into the ocean and raise world sea levels for thousands of years, a study showed on Sunday. The Wilkes Basin in East Antarctica, stretching more than 1,000 km (600 miles) …
A dispute over how a key United Nations report will treat the costs of climate change continues to simmer, with a lead author of the section on economics distancing himself from the summary to be sent to governments. Richard Tol, a lead convening author of the chapter 10 in the …
