Ice melt from Greenland, where this iceberg was photographed, could wreak havoc on the global climate this century. posteriori / Getty Images
There's good news and there's bad news. Two new studies focusing on ice melt in Antarctica and Greenland have revised down the worst-case scenario for the amount of sea level rise the world could see by 2100, but say the overall climate impacts of melt water entering the oceans could be devastating.
"The sea-level estimates maybe aren't as bad as we thought, but the climate predictions are worse," lead author of one of the studies and Antarctic Research Center of the University of Victoria, Wellington climate scientist Nick Golledge told National Geographic.
A cold morning sunrise in Enköping, Sweden on Jan. 27, when the temperature reached a low of 13°F. Anders Uhrvik / Flickr
Weather and climate aren't the same. It's one thing for people who spend little or no time learning about global warming to confuse the two, but when those we elect to represent us don't know the difference, we're in trouble.
For a U.S. president to tweet about what he referred to as "Global Waming" because parts of the country are experiencing severe winter conditions displays a profound ignorance that would be embarrassing for an ordinary citizen, let alone the leader of a world power.
NASA scientists were startled when a recent exploratory mission revealed a huge and rapidly-growing cavity on the underside of one of Antarctica's glaciers—signaling that the ice mass has been melting much faster than experts realized.
Air temperatures at 4 a.m. EST on Jan. 29, 2019. NASA Earth Observatory
During bouts of extreme weather, we always turn to our beloved meteorologists to analyze, forecast and report these events.
So you know it's really cold outside when trusted weather experts, like Minneapolis's Chris Shaffer of WCCO-TV, dedicate The Weeknd's "Can't Feel My Face" to Mother Nature amid temperatures that feel like the negative 30s, 40s and 50s.
A team of scientists and engineers drilled a hole to the base of the Rutford Ice Stream in West Antarctica. British Antarctic Survey
A group of scientists and engineers led by the
British Antarctic Survey dug a 1.3-mile deep hole through the ice sheet in West Antarctica—the deepest hole ever made in the region using hot water, according to BBC News.
By reaching the base of the Rutford Ice Stream, the researchers hope to understand how the area responds to a warming
climate, according to a press release.
An iceberg flows 180 miles north of East Antarctica. Cultura / Brett Phibbs / Getty Images
The results of what researchers say is the longest-running study of Antarctica's ice mass have been published, and they are dramatic. Yearly ice loss has increased by a factor of six in the past 40 years, contributing more than half an inch to global sea level rise, a University of California, Irvine (UCI) press release reported. The researchers also observed consistent ice loss from East Antarctica, which boasts the world's largest ice sheet and has traditionally been assumed to be more stable.
"The places undergoing changes in Antarctica are not limited to just a couple places," lead author and UCI chair of earth system science Eric Rignot told The Washington Post. "They seem to be more extensive than what we thought. That, to me, seems to be reason for concern."
Scientists just gave us another terrifying reason to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels: If temperatures push much beyond that point, both Greenland and Antarctica's ice sheets could reach a point where nothing can stop them from melting.
An international team of researchers published this chilling finding in Nature Climate Change Monday. The researchers set out to study how the ice sheets would fare in a warming world, and the results were urgent.
Large Pine Island Glacier calving events are occurring more frequently. NASA's DC-8 flies across the crack forming across the ice shelf on Oct. 26, 2011. Jefferson Beck / NASA
The Pine Island Glacier, the fastest-retreating glacier in Antarctica, lost another massive chunk of ice earlier this week.
A 115-square-mile section calved off the ice shelf on Oct. 29. That's roughly the five times the size of Manhattan.
A second, slightly less rectangular iceberg was seen during an Operation IceBridge flight over the northern Antarctic Peninsula on Oct. 16, 2018. NASA / Jeremy Harbeck
Last week, NASA
tweeted a photo of a perfectly natural and rectangular iceberg spotted during a flyover of the northern Antarctic Peninsula.
The unusual image blew up online and now NASA is back with more photos of weirdly angular icebergs from the same
Operation IceBridge trip.
Enypniasties eximia—a deep-sea swimming sea cucumber scientists have affectionately called the "headless chicken monster"—has been caught on camera for the first time in Antarctic waters thanks to new underwater camera technology developed by Australian researchers.
Footage of the finned sea creature will be used to aid important marine
conservation efforts in the Southern Ocean.
The Ross Ice Shelf at the Bay of Whales. Michael Van Woert, NOAA
By Marlene Cimons
Researchers monitoring vibrations from Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf were flabbergasted not long ago to hear something unexpected—the ice was "singing" to them. "We were stunned by a rich variety of time-varying tones that make up this newly described sort of signal," said Rick Aster, professor of geosciences at Colorado State University, one of the scientists involved in the study.
