Latest Glacier Stories

The contribution of Greenland to global sea level change and the mapping of previously unknown basins and mountains beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet are highlighted in a new film released by Cambridge University this morning.The work of glaciologist Professor Julian Dowdeswell, Director of Cambridge University's Scott Polar Research Institute, is the focus of This Icy World, the latest film in the University's Cambridge Ideas series.A frequent visitor to both the Arctic and Antarctic,...

A set of maps created by the University of Sheffield have illustrated, for the first time, how our last British ice sheet shrunk during the Ice Age.Led by Professor Chris Clark from the University´s Department of Geography, a team of experts developed the maps to understand what effect the current shrinking of ice sheets in parts of the Antarctic and Greenland will have on the speed of sea level rise.The unique maps record the pattern and speed of shrinkage of the large ice sheet that...

Scientists studying the world's most enigmatic lake have only 165 feet left to drill as time is running out. Vostok is a sub-glacial lake in Antarctica, hidden about 13,000 ft beneath the ice sheet. With the Antarctic summer almost over, temperatures will soon start to drop. Scientists will leave the remote base on February 6, when conditions are still mild enough for a plane to land. The team has not stopped drilling for weeks. "It's like working on an alien planet where no one has been...

Hotter summers may not be as catastrophic for the Greenland ice sheet as previously feared and may actually slow down the flow of glaciers, according to new research.A letter published in Nature on 27 January explains how increased melting in warmer years causes the internal drainage system of the ice sheet to 'adapt' and accommodate more melt-water, without speeding up the flow of ice toward the oceans. The findings have important implications for future assessments of global sea level...

A blanket of dust and rock debris is apparently shielding some glaciers in the world's highest mountain range from thawing, and varying wind patterns might explain why some are defying a melt."Our study shows there is no uniform response of Himalayan glaciers to climate change and highlights the importance of debris cover," scientists at universities in Germany and the United States wrote in the study of 286 glaciers.Elsewhere in the Himalayas "more than 65 percent of the monsoon-influenced...

Scientists reported on Friday that Greenland's icesheet shed a record amount of melted snow and ice in 2010. The study found that the 2010 runoff was twice the average annual loss in Greenland over the previous three decades, surpassing a record set in 2007. According to the paper, ice melt has now topped this benchmark every year since 1996. Greenland's icesheet could drive up ocean levels by about 23 feet if it melted, drowning coastal cities around the world. No credible projections today...

Sudden changes in the volume of meltwater contribute more to the acceleration "“ and eventual loss "“ of the Greenland ice sheet than the gradual increase of temperature, according to a University of British Columbia study.The ice sheet consists of layers of compressed snow and covers roughly 80 per cent of the surface of Greenland. Since the 1990s, it has been documented to be losing approximately 100 billion tonnes of ice per year "“ a process that most scientists agree is...

Glaciers are melting faster in southern South America and Alaska than in Europe, and communities need to adapt to the meltdown, warned a report compiled by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and scientists, and presented Tuesday at the U.N. climate talks in Cancun, Mexico.Many low-lying glaciers could disappear entirely in the coming decades, with the northwest U.S., southwest Canada and the Arctic also affected, the report said.While most glaciers began decreasing in size around...

For years, geologists have argued about the processes that formed steep inner gorges in the broad glacial valleys of the Swiss Alps.The U-shaped valleys were created by slow-moving glaciers that behaved something like road graders, eroding the bedrock over hundreds or thousands of years. When the glaciers receded, rivers carved V-shaped notches, or inner gorges, into the floors of the glacial valleys. But scientists disagreed about whether those notches were erased by subsequent glaciers and...

Southampton researchers have estimated that  sea-level rose by an average of about 1 meter per century at the end of the last Ice Age, interrupted by rapid "˜jumps' during which it rose by up to 2.5 meters per century. The findings, published in Global and Planetary Change, will help unravel the responses of ocean circulation and climate to large inputs of ice-sheet meltwater to the world ocean.Global sea level rose by a total of more than 120 meters as the vast ice sheets of the last Ice...