Latest Glaciology Stories
You can’t get any “higher”: on 22 August 2011 at exactly 9.42 a.m. the research icebreaker Polarstern of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association reaches the North Pole. The aim of the current expedition is to document changes in the far north. Thus, the researchers on board are conducting an extensive investigation program in the water, ice and air at the northernmost point on the Earth. The little sea ice cover makes the route via...
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said Thursday that it would attempt to attach 35 satellite radio-tags to walruses on the northwestern coast of Alaska as part of an ongoing study into how the mammals are responding to reduced Arctic sea ice conditions during late summer and fall. The fast-melting Arctic sea ice seems to be pushing the walruses out onto land, with many moving near the area where oil leases have been sold, the agency said. "Sea ice is an important component in the life...
In three decades of recording Arctic Ocean sea ice, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on Monday reported that in July 2011 the sea ice hit its lowest monthly recorded level. Sea ice in the Arctic covered an average 3 million square miles during July, the lowest measurement for that month since the NOAA started keeping such records in 1979. The July 2011 figure is 81,000 square miles smaller than 2007's July record low and about 22 percent below the average for...
The melting of Arctic sea ice may temporarily stabilize, and the ice may even expand, over the coming years, according to new research by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). "As we learn more about climate variability, new and unexpected research results are coming to light," said Sarah Ruth, program director in the Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences, which funds NCAR."What's needed now are longer-term observations to better understand...
A NASA scientist and her colleagues were able to observe for the first time the power of an earthquake and tsunami to break off large icebergs a hemisphere away.Kelly Brunt, a cryosphere specialist at Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., and colleagues were able to link the calving of icebergs from the Sulzberger Ice Shelf in Antarctica following the Tohoku Tsunami, which originated with an earthquake off the coast of Japan in March 2011. The finding, detailed in a paper published...
Scientists at the University of York, using an 'amino acid time capsule', have led the largest ever program to date the British Quaternary period, stretching back nearly three million years. It is the first widespread application of refinements of the 40-year-old technique of amino acid geochronology. The refined method, developed at York's BioArCh laboratories, measures the breakdown of a closed system of protein in fossil snail shells, and provides a method of dating archaeological and...
Danish researchers say the rate of melting in the Arctic sea may be slower than previously thought. A team from the Danish National Research Foundation for Geogenetics at the University of Copenhagen developed a method to measure the variations in the ice several millennia back in time.The scientists based their results on material gathered along the coast of northern Greenland, which experts believe will be the final place summer ice will survive. "Our studies show that there have been...
An analysis of prehistoric "Heinrich events" that happened many thousands of years ago, creating mass discharges of icebergs into the North Atlantic Ocean, make it clear that very small amounts of subsurface warming of water can trigger a rapid collapse of ice shelves.The findings, to be published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provide historical evidence that warming of water by 3-4 degrees was enough to trigger these huge, episodic discharges of ice...
A federal scientist under internal investigation, apparently over a study on polar bear deaths that was cited by Al Gore in "An Inconvenient Truth", went on the offensive Thursday, filing a complaint alleging persecution from within the Interior Department, MSNBC is reporting.Charles Monnett, Anchorage-based scientist with the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE), had earlier been questioned by investigators about the study he co-authored and was then...
Bt Jill Sakai, University of Wisconsin-MadisonDuring the last prolonged warm spell on Earth, the oceans were at least four meters "“ and possibly as much as 6.5 meters, or about 20 feet "“ higher than they are now.Where did all that extra water come from? Mainly from melting ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica, and many scientists, including University of Wisconsin-Madison geoscience assistant professor Anders Carlson, have expected that Greenland was the main culprit.But Carlson's new...
Latest Glaciology Reference Libraries
The Columbia Plateau ecoregion is a Level III ecoregion designed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency in the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington, with little areas over the Washington state border in Idaho. This ecoregion stretches across a wide swath of the Columbia River Basin from the Dalles, Oregon to Lewiston, Idaho to Okanogan, Washington near the Canadian border. It incorporates nearly 500 miles of the Columbia River, as well as the lower reaches of major tributaries....
The Arctic Ocean which is located in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Arctic north polar region, is the shallowest and smallest of the world’s five major oceanic divisions. The International Hydrographic Organization recognizes it as an ocean, although, some oceanographers consider it as the Arctic Mediterranean Sea or simply, the Arctic Sea, classifying it a Mediterranean sea or an estuary of the Atlantic Ocean. Alternatively, the Arctic Ocean can be considered as the northernmost...
Meltwater is water that is released from melting snow or ice. This includes meltwater from glacial ice and ice shelves over oceans. Meltwater is often produced during volcanic eruptions, and can cause dangerous lahars (landslides of wet volcanic debris). When meltwater pools on the surface rather than draining or flowing away, it forms pools known as melt ponds. Meltwater will often refreeze as the temperature drops. Meltwater can also collect or melt under the ice's surface. Sub-glacial...
