While the dramatic decline in Arctic sea ice cover over the last three decades has been well documented, NASA climatologists say something more complex is happening at the other end of the planet. Their study shows that from 1978 to 2010 the total extent of sea ice surrounding Antarctica in the Southern Ocean grew by […]
New evidence put forward by Georgia Institute of Technology atmospheric scientists links increasingly heavy snowfalls in the Northern Hemisphere to declining summer ice cover in the Arctic. Records show that since the level of Arctic sea ice set a new record low in 2007, significantly above-normal winter snow cover has been seen in large parts […]
As the Arctic Ocean warms and ice-packs retreat, new routes will open up which will likely prove irresistible to shipping companies. A Northwest Passage and Northeast Passage through the Arctic Ocean would provide a distance savings of about 25 percent and 50 percent, respectively, with coincident time and fuel savings. But these new trade routes […]
Unprecedented warm temperatures in the arctic this summer were so extreme that researchers have begun revising their climate forecasts. “Everything has changed dramatically in the watershed we observed,” reports Scott Lamoureux, leader of an International Polar Year project. “It’s something we’d envisioned for the future – but to see it happening now is quite remarkable.” […]
The global warming debate has until now focused almost entirely on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, but scientists at the University of California – Irvine, suggest that a lesser-known problem – dirty snow – could explain the Arctic warming attributed to greenhouse gases. Dirty snow is created when particulate matter from exhausts, smoke […]
Earth’s warming climate looks like it could thaw 90 percent of the perennially frozen soil across the Arctic by 2100, altering ecosystems and damaging infrastructure across Canada, Alaska, and Russia. Additionally, the effects of so much carbon being released into the atmosphere could massively increase the rate of climate change. These dire predictions, from the […]
Arctic warming could be behind a decrease in the number and size of Arctic lakes, say researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the University of California Los Angeles. Their study, appearing in Science, compares satellite photographs of Siberia taken in the 1970s to photographs from 1997-2004. Researcher Larry Hinzman, from the University of […]
