This is the 33rd issuance of the annual assessment now known as State of the Climate, published in the Bulletin since 1996. As a supplement to the Bulletin, its foremost function is to document the status and trajectory of many components of the climate system. However, as a series, the …
The ocean’s role in regulating atmospheric carbon dioxide on glacial–interglacial timescales remains an unresolved issue in paleoclimatology. Many apparently independent changes in ocean physics, chemistry, and biology need to be invoked to explain the full signal. Recent understanding of the deep ocean circulation and stratification is used to demonstrate that …
Penguin species in the Antarctic that once benefited from rising temperatures are now in decline due to warming gone too far, scientists said Thursday. Previous scientific research was unable to determine why populations of Adelie and chinstrap penguins are in decline, while gentoo penguins are increasing in numbers. In the …
Our understanding of the deglacial evolution of the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) following the Last Glacial Maximum (26,000–19,000 years ago) is based largely on a few well-dated but temporally and geographically restricted terrestrial and shallow-marine sequences. This sparseness limits our understanding of the dominant feedbacks between the AIS, Southern Hemisphere …
Antarctica is shedding 160 billion tonnes a year of ice into the ocean, twice the amount of a few years ago, according to new satellite observations. The ice loss is adding to the rising sea levels driven by climate change and even east Antarctica is now losing ice. The new …
While the globe last month endured its warmest April in 135 years of records (tied with 2010), Antarctic sea ice reached its largest April extent on record, according to a report released Tuesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Antarctic sea ice last month measured 3.47 million square …
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 …
Antarctica is now losing about 160 billion tonnes of ice a year to the ocean - twice as much as when the continent was last surveyed. The new assessment comes from Europe's Cryosat spacecraft, which has a radar instrument specifically designed to measure the shape of the ice sheet. The …
The collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which holds enough water to raise global seas by several feet, has begun. University of Washington researchers have used detailed topography maps and computer modelling to confirm that the sheet has started to thin. In some places, the Thwaites Glacier has been …
The Maldives “is not prepared at all” for the projected acceleration of sea level rise caused by the collapse of a glacier system in Western Antarctica, local environmental groups have said. Two separate studies, by Nasa and the University of Washington, reported on Monday that unstable glaciers in the Amundsen …
Adapting to sea level rises as ice sheets melt will be a really big deal – it'll be expensive and hard We should be worried, and it looks increasingly probable that we should be worried – that's what these new studies on the west Antarctic ice sheet tell me. The …
OSLO: Vast glaciers in West Antarctica seem to be locked in an irreversible thaw linked to global warming that may push up sea levels for centuries, scientists said on Monday. Six glaciers, eaten away from below by a warming of sea waters around the frozen continent, were flowing fast into …
A rapidly melting glacial region of Antarctica has passed “the point of no return,” threatening to increase sea levels, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. “The collapse of this sector of West Antarctica appears to be unstoppable,” Eric Rignot, a glaciologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the …
The collapse of the Western Antarctica ice sheet is already under way and is unstoppable, two separate teams of scientists said on Monday. The glaciers' retreat is being driven by climate change and is already causing sea-level rise at a much faster rate than scientists had anticipated. The loss of …
A large section of the mighty West Antarctica ice sheet has begun falling apart and its continued melting now appears to be unstoppable, two groups of scientists reported on Monday. If the findings hold up, they suggest that the melting could destabilize neighboring parts of the ice sheet and a …
We measure the grounding line retreat of glaciers draining the Amundsen Sea Embayment of West Antarctica using Earth Remote Sensing (ERS-1/2) satellite radar interferometry from 1992 to 2011. Pine Island Glacier retreated 31 km at its center, with most retreat in 2005–2009 when the glacier un-grounded from its ice plain. …
Change in Southern Ocean winds helps explain why Antarctica is bucking the global warming trend Droughts across southern Australia are to continue increasing as the Roaring Forties get stronger and closer to Antarctica, a study has found. It also explains why Antarctica is bucking the global warming trend. Australian National …
Russia has lifted its opposition to marine reserves proposed for the Antarctic, with Moscow for the first time laying down its demands to agree to the giant areas being protected. Opposition by Russia and a handful of other nations stymied two reserve proposals when they were put before Antarctic nations …
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) latest study shows that if East Antarctica’s Wilkes Basin’s rim of ice lets go, it is likely to trigger a persistent ice discharge into the ocean, resulting in unstoppable sea-level rise for thousands of years to come. Using the ground profile under the …
Parts of the vast ice sheet of East Antarctica - which collectively holds enough water to raise global sea levels by 53 metres - could begin an irreversible slide into the sea this century, causing an unstoppable process of global coastal destruction, scientists have warned. East Antarctica is widely considered …
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 new study showed. The Wilkes Basin in East Antarctica, stretching more than 1,000 km inland, has enough …
