NASA: Vast Antarctic ice shelf a few years from disintegration

NASA has found that the last section of Antarctica’s Larsen B Ice Shelf is likely to disintegrate before the end of the decade. Transcript: We know that this ice shelf existed for at least 11 to 12 thousand years. In 2002, two-thirds of it collapsed in less than six weeks. In the intervening period between…

Ocean May Be Melting Totten Glacier Says Study

Ocean access to a cavity beneath Totten Glacier in East Antarctica http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v8/n4/full/ngeo2388.html Totten Glacier, the primary outlet of the Aurora Subglacial Basin, has the largest thinning rate in East Antarctica1, 2. Thinning may be driven by enhanced basal melting due to ocean processes3, modulated by polynya activity4, 5. Warm modified Circumpolar Deep Water, which has…

Rivers of meltwater on Greenland’s ice sheet contribute to rising sea levels

Using satellite and field work after an extreme melt event in Greenland, a UCLA-led study finds that melt-prone areas on its ice sheet develop a remarkably efficient drainage system of stunning blue streams and rivers that carry meltwater into moulins (sinkholes) and ultimately the ocean. However, the team’s measurements at the ice’s edge show that…

ScienceCasts: Climate Change and the Yin-Yang of Polar Sea Ice

Arctic and Antarctic sea ice are both affected by climate change, but the two poles of Earth are behaving in intriguingly different ways. Visit http://science.nasa.gov/ for more. Why Increasing Antarctic Sea Ice Doesn’t Mean Climate Change Isn’t Happening http://www.businessinsider.com/antarctic-sea-ice-climate-change-2014-12

ScienceCasts: The Cloudy Future of Arctic Sea Ice

As climate change continues to hammer Arctic sea ice, pushing back its summertime boundaries to record-high latitudes, NASA is flying an innovative airborne mission to find out how these developments will affect worldwide weather. NASA: Oct 15, 2014: Climate change is a global phenomenon, yet Earth scientists are keeping a wary eye on one place…

Bill McGuire: Modelling suggests with ice cap melt, an increase in volcanic activity

Climate State interviewed Bill McGuire, Emeritus Professor of Earth Sciences at the University College London, one of Britain’s leading volcanologists and contributing author to the 2011 IPCC report. He called for an early tsunami warning system (2004, The Guardian) and warned in his book The Waking Giant, of the Earth response (more earthquakes, tsunamis and…

Arctic Sea Ice, Summer 2014 (NASA animation)

An animation of daily Arctic sea ice extent in summer 2014, from March 21, 2014 to Sept. 17, 2014 – when the ice appeared to reach it’s minimum extent for the year. It’s the sixth lowest minimum sea ice extent in the satellite era. The data was provided by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency from…