Bookmarks (14) clear filters

Human activities are increasing wind-blown dust, depleting crucial freshwater supplyHimalayan snow and ice is diminishing fast. Global heating is certainly playing a significant role, but now a recent study in Nature Climate Change reveals that wind-blown dust is worsening the melting effect.Winter snowfall and spring snowmelt provide more than half of the annual freshwater needs of around 700 million people in south Asia, but...

Number of glacial lakes rose by 53% in 1990-2018 to reveal impact of increased meltwaterGlacial lakes have grown rapidly around the world in recent decades, according to satellite images that reveal the impact of increased meltwater draining off retreating glaciers.Scientists analysed more than quarter of a million satellite images to assess how lakes formed by melting glaciers have been affected by global heating and...

Climate-driven loss is likely to be the worst for centuries, and is pushing up sea levelsGreenland’s melting ice sheet – in pictures The Greenland ice sheet lost a record amount of ice in 2019, equivalent to a million tonnes per minute across the year, satellite data shows.The climate crisis is heating the Arctic at double the rate in lower latitudes, and the ice cap...

Roads near Courmayeur closed to tourists because of threat from falling Planpincieux iceHomes have been evacuated in Courmayeur in Italy’s Aosta valley, after a renewed warning that a huge portion of a Mont Blanc glacier is at risk of collapse.The measures were introduced on Wednesday morning after experts from the Fondazione Montagne Sicura (Safe Mountains Foundation) said 500,000 cubic metres of ice was in...

New research has found extreme melting of the country’s glaciers in 2018 was at least ten times more likely due to human-caused global heatingTwice a year, glaciologist Lauren Vargo and her colleagues set up camp beside two small lakes close to New Zealand’s Brewster glacier. Each time the trek to carry the measuring stakes takes a little bit longer as the glacier’s terminus gets...

The bus was on the steep road to the famed Athabasca glacier when it lost control and rolledA glacier tour bus rolled over in Canada’s southern province of Alberta, killing three people and injuring several, according to reports.A sightseeing bus carrying 27 passengers overturned en route to the glacier near the Columbia Icefield in Alberta’s Jasper National Park, according to a report by CBC....

Every summer, the Presena glacier in northern Italy is protected from the sun with huge reflective tarpsA vast tarpaulin unravels, gathering speed as it bounces down the glacier over glinting snow. Summer is here and the alpine ice is being protected from global warming.In northern Italy, the Presena glacier has lost more than one third of its volume since 1993. Continue reading...

Study reveals loss largely due to high pressure zone not taken into account by climate modelsThere was a dramatic melting of Greenland’s ice sheet in the summer of 2019, researchers have confirmed, in a study that reveals the loss was largely down to a persistent zone of high pressure over the region.The ice sheet melted at a near record rate in 2019, and much...

Scale and speed of loss much higher than predicted, threatening inundation for hundreds of millions of peopleGreenland’s ice sheet is melting much faster than previously thought, threatening hundreds of millions of people with inundation and bringing some of the irreversible impacts of the climate emergency much closer.Ice is being lost from Greenland seven times faster than it was in the 1990s, and the scale...

Warning of ‘existential threat to civilisation’ as impacts lead to cascade of unstoppable eventsThe world may already have crossed a series of climate tipping points, according to a stark warning from scientists. This risk is “an existential threat to civilisation”, they say, meaning “we are in a state of planetary emergency”.Tipping points are reached when particular impacts of global heating become unstoppable, such as...

‘Total surprise’ discovery overturns conventional understanding of riversIn the turbid, frigid waters roaring from the glaciers of Canada’s high Arctic, researchers have made a surprising discovery: for decades, the northern rivers secretly pulled carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a rate faster than the Amazon rainforest.The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, flip the conventional understanding of rivers, which...

Russian navy discovers yet-to-be-named islands previously hidden under glaciersThe Russian navy says it has discovered five new islands revealed by melting glaciers in the remote Arctic.An expedition in August and September charted the islands, which have yet to be named and were previously hidden under glaciers, said the head of the northern fleet, Vice-Admiral Alexander Moiseyev. Continue reading...

Climate report says intense storms and loss of marine life are already inevitableExtreme sea level events that used to occur once a century will strike every year on many coasts by 2050, no matter whether climate heating emissions are curbed or not, according to a landmark report by the world’s scientists.The stark assessment of the climate crisis in the world’s oceans and ice caps...

An IPCC report says two-thirds of glaciers on the largest ice sheet after the Arctic and Antarctic are set to disappear in 80 yearsMany moons ago in Tibet, the Second Buddha transformed a fierce nyen (a malevolent mountain demon) into a neri (the holiest protective warrior god) called Khawa Karpo, who took up residence in the sacred mountain bearing his name. Khawa Karpo is...