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Icebergs calving from an ice shelf in West Antarctica. NASA / GSFC / Jefferson Beck / CC BY-SA 2.0

Good News From Antarctica: Rising Bedrock Could Save Vulnerable Ice Sheet

After last week's disturbing news that ice melt in Antarctica has tripled in the last five years, another study published Thursday offers some surprising good news for the South Pole and its vulnerable West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS).

The study, published in Science by an international research team, found that the bedrock below the WAIS is rising, a process known as "uplift," at record rates as melting ice removes weight, potentially stabilizing the ice sheet that scientists feared would be lost to climate change.

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Climate
Birds Watching. NRDC artist-in-residence Jenny Kendler

In Upstate New York, a Summer of Climate Change Art

By Patrick Rogers

On 500 acres of woodland and rolling hills in New York's Hudson Valley sits the Storm King Art Center. This site of former farmland and gravel quarries is studded with monumental sculptures by Modernist giants like Alexander Calder and Mark di Suvero. In a sense, you could say the center's bucolic setting is itself a piece of work.

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Climate
The Native Alaskan village of Kivalina is especially vulnerable to climate change. ShoreZone / Flickr / CC BY 2.0

Alaska Defies Partisan Climate Divide With Forthcoming Action Plan

Alaska has voted for a Republican for president in every U.S. election since 1964, according to the Anchorage Daily News. Given the growing partisan divide on climate change, one would not expect the state to take action on climate change, let alone acknowledge that it is a problem.

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Animals
Weddell seals. U.S. Geological Survey

Antarctic Seals Help Scientists Track Melting Ice Sheet

Scientists studying the warming waters and salinity of the Southern Ocean's Amundsen Sea—which surrounds the Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers, two of the largest and fastest-retreating glaciers in Antarctica—are using a novel method collect data.

They temporarily glued sensors onto the fur of Antarctic seals. Really.

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Food
Warming water puts fish on the move. Fishermen adapt, or fall behind. Here, a boat cruises Canada's Mackenzie River. Leslie Philipp/ Flickr / CC BY 2.0

Fish and Fishermen Already Moving to Survive Climate Change

By Amy McDermott

The Inuvialuit and Gwich'in peoples spend their summers fishing off the coast of Canada's Yukon Territory. For generations, they've trekked from towns around the Western Arctic to a spit called Shingle Point, where the Mackenzie River's braided flows spill off North America into the Beaufort Sea. The nutrient-rich waters at the mouth of the Mackenzie are fat with marine fish, drawn in by the brief abundance of Arctic summer. Indigenous families subsist on these fish and other wild resources throughout the warm months.

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Politics
A launch from the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site in the low-lying Marshall Islands that is vulnerable to sea level rise. U.S. Department of Defense

Pentagon Watered Down Climate Report for Trump-Era Publication, Draft Reveals

A Department of Defense (DOD) report on the potential impacts of climate change on U.S. military infrastructure paradoxically downplayed the importance of climate change, an earlier draft of the report obtained by The Washington Post and publicized Thursday revealed.

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Climate
Sea ice in the Bering Sea on April 29, 2013 (left) and at an historically low level on April 29, 2018 (right). NASA Earth Observatory

Record Low Bering Sea Ice Causes 'Natural Disaster' for Alaskan Communities

The impacts of the Arctic's warmest winter on record are being felt into the spring.

As April drew to a close, scientists confirmed that sea ice in the Bering Sea, the body of water between Alaska and Russia, was at 10 percent of normal levels, The Washington Post reported Thursday.

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The research icebreaker Polarstern in the central Arctic Ocean. Alfred-Wegener-Institute / Ruediger Stein

'Nowhere Is Immune': Researchers Find Record Levels of Microplastics in Arctic Sea Ice

Scientists found record levels of microplastics in Arctic sea ice, a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications revealed.

Researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) sampled ice from five Arctic Ocean regions and found up to 12,000 microplastic particles per liter (approximately 1.06 liquid quarts) of ice, an AWI press release reported.

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Climate
Dust storms in the Gulf of Alaska, captured by NASA's Aqua satellite. NASA

Half of Earth’s Satellites Restrict Use of Climate Data

By Mariel Borowitz

Scientists and policymakers need satellite data to understand and address climate change. Yet data from more than half of unclassified Earth-observing satellites is restricted in some way, rather than shared openly.

When governments restrict who can access data, or limit how people can use or redistribute it, that slows the progress of science. Now, as U.S. climate funding is under threat, it's more important than ever to ensure that researchers and others make the most of the collected data.

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