An international team of scientists has found a dramatic ice sheet collapse at the end of the ice age before last caused widespread climate changes and led to a peak in the sea level well above its present height. The team found the events 135,000 years ago caused the planet to warm in a different way to the end of …
Part of Antarctica has begun thawing unusually fast, leaving scientists unsure whether a natural cycle or human-caused climate change is responsible. By Tim Radford
Antarctic glaciers once thought relatively stable are starting to melt. Evidence from a five-year satellite study of the frozen rivers on the southern Antarctic Peninsula now reveal that these are shedding ice at the rate of 60 cubic kilometres a year: altogether around 300 trillion litres of water has moved from the frozen continent to the oceans. Bert Wouters of …
Sudden onset of ice loss in Antarctica so large it affects Earth’s gravity field
A group of scientists, led by a team from the University of Bristol, UK has observed a sudden increase of ice loss in a previously stable region of Antarctica. The research is published today in Science. Using measurements of the elevation of the Antarctic ice sheet made by a suite of satellites, the researchers found that the Southern Antarctic Peninsula showed …
ANTARCTICA IS MELTING FASTER THAN EVER BEFORE A MASSIVE MELTING PROBLEM – Mary Beth Griggs
Study after study shows that Antarctica isn’t in great shape. Its ice shelves are disappearing and its ice sheets are collapsing, hastening swiftly rising sea levels. Sounds terrible. But just in case you wanted a second opinion, a new study out of Princeton University takes a look at a decade’s worth of satellite data. Their results, published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, show that not only …
Gravity data show that Antarctic ice sheet is melting increasingly faster
During the past decade, Antarctica’s massive ice sheet lost twice the amount of ice in its western portion compared with what it accumulated in the east, according to Princeton University researchers who came to one overall conclusion — the southern continent’s ice cap is melting ever faster. The researchers “weighed” Antarctica’s ice sheet using gravitational satellite data and found that …
Organic Food Industry Explodes as Consumer Demand Spikes – Lorraine Chow
Looks like organic food has gone from a new-age trend to a staple in supermarkets and many American diets. According to a new analysis from the Organic Trade Association (OTA), organic food sales in 2014 jumped 11 percent to $35.9 billion, claiming almost 5 percent of the total food sales in the U.S. The numbers are a huge spike since the OTA first kept record in 1997, where …
As Antarctica Melts Away, Seas Could Rise Ten Feet Within 100 Years
Rapid melting of Antarctic ice could push sea levels up 10 feet worldwide within two centuries, “recurving” heavily populated coastlines and essentially reshaping the world, the Associated Press reported Friday. Parts of Antarctica are thawing so quickly, the continent has become “ground zero of global climate change without a doubt,” Harvard geophysicist Jerry Mitrovica told AP. The Antarctic Peninsula, including the vulnerable West Antarctic ice sheet, …