One of the biggest icebergs in history has snapped off the West Antarctic ice shelf, according to scientists who have been monitoring a growing crack for months.
Arctic sea ice cover is set to reach to the second-lowest extent since satellite observations began in 1979, according to scientists from Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).
The World Meteorological Organization has confirmed that 2016 made history with a record global average temperature, exceptionally low sea ice, and ongoing increases in sea levels and ocean heat.
The world is set to notch up a new heat record in 2016 after a sizzling 2015 as global warming stokes more floods and rising sea levels, the UN weather agency said.
The Russian navy's first new icebreaker in decades, the Ilya Muromets, was floated out during a ceremony Friday in St. Petersburg, the Tass news agency reports.
British researchers have reinforced recent evidence that melting in the Antarctic caused by the warming of the Southern Ocean could ultimately lead to global sea levels rising by around 3 meters or nearly 10 feet.
Despite the fact there has been no daylight in the Arctic for weeks, temperatures at the North Pole spiked above the freezing point for the second time on record on Wednesday.
A new NASA study says that an increase in Antarctic snow accumulation that began 10,000 years ago is currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased losses from its thinning glaciers.
Sea level rise in the past two decades has accelerated faster than previously thought in a sign of climate change threatening coasts from Florida to Bangladesh, a study said today.
An international team of researchers, led by Dr Bethan Davies, from Royal Holloway, University of London, has discovered that small glaciers that end on land around the Antarctic Peninsula are highly vulnerable to slight changes in air temperature and may be at risk of disappearing within 200 years.
Temperatures are currently rising rapidly in the Antarctic Peninsula. Because warmer air holds more moisture, the amount of snowfall has also increased. Some researchers have suggested that this may offset the melting of the glaciers, however this study found that just a small rise in air temperature increased melting so much that even large amounts of extra snowfall could not prevent glacier recession.
Simulated
ice thickness for the Greenland ice sheet for the last interglacial
period (~126 thousand years before present). This was the most recent
period with relatively warm temperatures at high northern latitudes,
not unlike what is expected for the 21st century from projections of
global warming. Circles show locations with ice core data. (Credit:
Image courtesy of University of Bergen) - ScienceDaily (Nov. 9, 2012)
— In a new study from the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research,
scientists show how the northern part of the Greenland ice sheet might
be very vulnerable to a warming climate The
study is based on simulations with a state of the art global climate
model and a dynamic ice sheet model of the last interglacial warm
period. This period (~126 thousand years before present) is the most
recent in Earth's history with temperatures warmer than present in the
Arctic region, and has frequently been used as an analogue for a future
greenhouse climate. During this period we know that the Greenland ice
sheet was significantly reduced in size compared to today.
The city of Venice is investing billions in a new flood defence system to protect against sea level rises
(CNN) -- Sea-levels are rising unevenly around the
world, with Pacific countries in particular suffering significant
increases over the past two decades, according to accurate new satellite
data.
On average, global
sea-levels have been rising at about three millimeters (mm) a year,
however, this masks large differences between regions of the world.