VOX notes that Pakistan has more than 7,000 glaciers, and that changes in climatic conditions melting them, fueling floodwaters. A series of extreme floods has utterly devastated the South Asian nation, which is home to some 225 million people, washing away roads and buildings, destroying farms, and stranding hundreds of thousands. Over the weekend, which brought…
Recent published research shows the danger of massive, potentially irreversible, global sea-level rise within the next couple of centuries should temperatures overshoot 2°C. Perhaps most sobering, this loss may become rapid and permanent, with no halt in ice loss even should CO2 concentrations return t pre-industrial levels; and rates approaching 5 cm/year by 2150, and…
At the fall 2021 meeting of the American Geophysical Union on 13 December, a presentation on the latest for the Thwaites Glacier (also dubbed the Doomsday Glacier) highlighted processes at the ice shelf of the glacier, which will likely result in dramatic changes within 10 years. Meaning, acceleration of ice discharge into the Ocean, and…
We interviewed Eric Rignot, Donald Bren Professor and Chancellor Professor of Earth system science at the University of California, Irvine and Senior Research Scientist for the Radar Science and Engineering Section at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The 6th IPCC Report and Sea Level Rise Chris Machens: Hello Eric, back in 2015 I’ve asked you about…
Ice shelves buttress glaciers – a new mechanism involving rift dynamics suggests ice shelfs could retreat faster than previously modeled. SciTechDaily: “The thinning of the ice melange that glues together large segments of floating ice shelves is another way climate change can cause rapid retreat of Antarctica’s ice shelves,” said co-author Eric Rignot, UCI professor…
This heat has rapidly melted any snow remaining on the ground and has caused the thawing of the top layer of the permanently frozen soil. The water from the thaw is unable to percolate down through the frozen layers below. That causes even more thawing.
CarbonBrief recently published a guest article by Robert M. DeConto, Pamela Pearson, and David Pollard, called Overshooting 2C risks rapid and unstoppable sea level rise from Antarctica. Here is now a text-to-speech conversation for people who like to listen to it. Visit Overshooting 2C risks rapid and unstoppable sea level rise from Antarctica to follow…
Ice cores obtained years ago document an ominous rise of temperatures, abrupt change manifesting just within a few decades. First scientists thought this must be an error, but slowly they realize what it could mean for us today. Research into the polar ocean, found, it is getting hotter at a rate faster than even the worst…
At the end of the last ice age, geological fingerprints recorded in ocean sediments suggests glacier retreat of 50 meters a day, 18 km a year.For comparison the fastest retreating glaciers in Antarctica today are the Pope, and the Smith glacier system, retreating about 2.9 km a year. The study data was obtained in the…