sea ice

By Jennie Gosché In late 2019, before the world was completely upended by the COVID-19 pandemic, I was presented a last-minute chance to photograph polar bears outside one of the northernmost villages in the United States — Kaktovik, Alaska. It was an opportunity I couldn’t refuse, and as the COVID-19 pandemic now stretches into summer […]

If world governments don’t act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, most polar bear populations will not survive the century, a new study has found. Polar bears, who rely on Arctic sea ice to hunt for seals, have long been a symbol of the impacts of the climate crisis. As the ice melts, they lose the […]

Once thought too frozen to burn, Siberia is now on fire and spewing carbon after enduring its warmest June ever, according to CNN. The most immediate impacts of the climate crisis are in the nether-regions world of the world where temperatures are extreme and inhospitable. One of the most alarming examples is playing out in […]

For the first time, microscopic plastic pollution has been found in Antarctic sea ice samples collected more than a decade ago, suggesting that microplastic concentrations in Southern Sea ice may be higher than previously believed. A total of 96 microplastic particles from 14 different types of polymer were discovered in an ice core sample collected […]

The polar ice caps are melting six times faster than they were in the 1990s, the most comprehensive look at the data to date has found. That data, compiled and analyzed by the Ice Sheet Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise (IMBIE), puts the melting of Greenland and Antarctica‘s ice sheets on track with the worst-case-scenario prediction […]

The fossil fuel industry is driving polar bears to cannibalism. Scientists at the Russian Academy of Sciences said Wednesday that there were increasing reports of bears attacking other bears for food, The Moscow Times reported. “Cases of cannibalism among polar bears are a long-established fact, but we’re worried that such cases used to be found […]

The climate crisis is accelerating the rate of change in Alaska‘s marine ecosystem far faster than scientists had previously thought, causing possibly irreversible changes, according to new research, as Newsweek reported. The new study from the University of Alaska Fairbanks shows that the climate crisis has warmed waters, changing ecosystems and crippling sea ice growth. […]

The climate crisis wreaks havoc on animals and plants that have trouble adapting to global heating and extreme weather. Some of the most obvious examples are at the far reaches of the planet, as bees disappear from Canada, penguin populations plummet in the Antarctic, and now polar bears in the Arctic are struggling from sea […]