The weather in many areas across the U.S. has been – and certainly throughout America's heartland was for much of the past winter and spring – frightful.
A polar fox is fitted with a satellite tracking collar in Krossfjorden, Svalbard, a Norwegian Arctic archipelago, on July 29, 2017, as part of research conducted by the Norwegian Polar Institute. Norwegian researchers said July 2, that this young female arctic fox has been tracked walking from northern Norway to Canada's far north. Elise Stroemseng / Norwegian Polar Institute / Twitter
Scientists were left "speechless" by a female Arctic fox's record-breaking journey from Norway's Svalbard islands to northern Canada, BBC News reported Monday.
A vehicle on the melting permafrost tundra on the edge of the Bering Sea at the town of Quinhagak in Alaska on April 12, 2019. MARK RALSTON / AFP / Getty Images
An unseasonably warm May followed by record-breaking June temperatures melted Alaskan ice far earlier than normal this year, alarming residents and scientists alike, the Associated Press reports.
Aerial view of icebergs on Arctic Ocean in Greenland. Explora_2005 / iStock / Getty Images
The annual Arctic thaw has kicked off with record-setting ice melt and sea ice loss that is several weeks ahead of schedule, scientists said, as the New York Times reported.
When temperatures hit the 80s Fahrenheit in May above latitude 40, sun-seekers hit the parks, lakes, and beaches, and thoughts turn to summer. By contrast, when temperatures lurk in the drizzly 40s and 50s well into flower season, northerners get impatient for summer. But when those 80-degree temperatures visit latitude 64 in Russia, as they just did, and when sleet disrupts Mother's Day weekend in May in Massachusetts, as it just did, thoughts turn to: what is going on here?
Mother and cub in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge near Kaktovik, on the north slope of Alaska. cheryl strahl / Flickr
By Rebecca Bowe
Send an army of industry workers into remote polar bear territory in the dead of winter, and things are not going to end well.
Yet that's just what the Trump administration would open the door to as it prepares for oil and gas drilling and moves to authorize seismic testing, a precursor to drilling in the Arctic Refuge.
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."
We're stepping into a new year in the climate fight. The turning of the year is a milestone both for stoking our resolve, and for noting how deep we now are into climate overtime. In 2018 there was a lot of talk of diminishing odds and despair, and not without reason. So if, like me, you're heading into 2019 discouraged or even despairing, I have three things to say: you're not wrong; the fight from here on out is not the one you signed up for; but there's more to hope, even your own, than meets the eye.
Aerial view of Florence, Nichols, Conway and Waccamaw, South Carolina, impacted by floodwaters on Sept. 21. South Carolina Air National Guard
By Sharon Kelly
2018 is set to rank as the fourth warmest year on record—and the fourth year in a row reflecting a full degree Celsius (1.8° Fahrenheit) temperature rise from the late 1800s, climate scientists say.
This was the year that introduced us to fire tornadoes, bomb cyclones and in Death Valley, a five-day streak of 125°F temperatures, part of the hottest month ever documented at a U.S. weather station.
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.
