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‘Tiger stripes’ underneath Antarctic glaciers slow the flow

By Guest PostNovember 30, 2013Environmentantarctic glaciers, antarctic ice, bed of rock, british antarctic survey, climate change, douglas macayeal, Europe, flow of glaciers, friction zones, massive antarctic glaciers, mathematical modeling, North America, olga sergienko, pattern, pine island glacier, princeton university, richard hindmarsh, satellite measurements, sea-level rise, sediment, thwaites glacier, tiger stripes, university of chicago, warming climate, west antarctica

Narrow stripes of dirt and rock beneath massive Antarctic glaciers create friction zones that slow the flow of ice toward the sea, researchers at Princeton University and the British Antarctic Survey have found. Understanding how these high-friction regions form and subside could help researchers understand how the flow of these glaciers responds to a warming climate.

Just as no-slip strips on flooring prevent people from slipping on a wet floor, these ribs or “tiger stripes” — named in reference to Princeton’s tiger mascot — provide friction that hinders the glaciers from slipping along the underlying bed of rock and sediment, the researchers report online in the journal Science. (more…)

Sea level rise: New iceberg theory points to areas at risk of rapid disintegration

By Guest PostAugust 6, 2013Environmentantarctic ocean, Antarctica, catastrophic breakup, catastrophic disintegration, coast, diverse calving patterns, glacier geometry, greenland, helheim glacier, ice shelf, iceberg calving, jakobshavn glacier, jeremy bassis, larsen b, new iceberg theory, new model, physics, pine island glacier, rapid disintegration, risk, sea-level rise, thwaites, university of michigan

ANN ARBOR — In events that could exacerbate sea level rise over the coming decades, stretches of ice on the coasts of Antarctica and Greenland are at risk of rapidly cracking apart and falling into the ocean, according to new iceberg calving simulations from the University of Michigan.

“If this starts to happen and we’re right, we might be closer to the higher end of sea level rise estimates for the next 100 years,” said Jeremy Bassis, assistant professor of atmospheric, oceanic and space sciences at the U-M College of Engineering, and first author of a paper on the new model published in the current issue of Nature Geoscience. (more…)

World’s melting glaciers making large contribution to sea rise

By Guest PostMay 29, 2013Environmentalaska, alex gardner, antarctic ice sheets, arctic canada, clark university, climate experiment, coastal greenland, columbia glacier, contribution, glacier mass changes, grace, gravity recovery, greenland, icesat, john wahr, melting glaciers, NASA, sea rise, sea-level rise, tad pfeffer, the himalayas, the southern andes, university colorado boulder, university of michigan, world

While 99 percent of Earth’s land ice is locked up in the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, the remaining ice in the world’s glaciers contributed just as much to sea rise as the two ice sheets combined from 2003 to 2009, says a new study led by Clark University and involving the University Colorado Boulder.

The new research found that all glacial regions lost mass from 2003 to 2009, with the biggest ice losses occurring in Arctic Canada, Alaska, coastal Greenland, the southern Andes and the Himalayas. The glaciers outside of the Greenland and Antarctic sheets lost an average of roughly 260 billion metric tons of ice annually during the study period, causing the oceans to rise 0.03 inches, or about 0.7 millimeters per year. (more…)

Century-Old Science Helps Confirm Global Warming

By Guest PostMay 25, 2013Environmentanthropogenic, argo array, australia, century old science, challengers voyage, global scientific survey, global warming, greenhouse gases, hms challenger, human activities, josh willis, life beneath, NASA, natural variation, ocean data, ocean profiling floats, ocean surface, oceanographic expedition, sandy bay, sea water, sea-level rise, temperature, thermal expansion, university analysis, university of tasmania, will hobbs

A new NASA and university analysis of ocean data collected more than 135 years ago by the crew of the HMS Challenger oceanographic expedition provides further confirmation that human activities have warmed our planet over the past century.

Researchers from the University of Tasmania, Sandy Bay, Australia; and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., combined the ship’s measurements of ocean temperatures with modern observations from the international Argo array of ocean profiling floats. They used both as inputs to state-of-the-art climate models, to get a picture of how the world’s oceans have changed since the Challenger’s voyage. (more…)

Recent Antarctic climate, glacier changes at the ‘upper bound’ of normal

By Guest PostMay 15, 2013Environmentantarctic glaciers, antarctic peninsula, antarctic warming, Antarctica, climate change, dark layer, eric steig, glaciers, global warming, human caused warming, ice core, ice sheet divide, icy continent, isotope oxygen 18, oxygen 16, qinghua ding, rapid ice loss, sea-level rise, south america, temperature, tropical pacific ocean, university of washington, upper bound, volcanic ash, west antarctic

In the last few decades, glaciers at the edge of the icy continent of Antarctica have been thinning, and research has shown the rate of thinning has accelerated and contributed significantly to sea level rise.

New ice core research suggests that, while the changes are dramatic, they cannot be attributed with confidence to human-caused global warming, said Eric Steig, a University of Washington professor of Earth and space sciences. (more…)

Cutting Specific Atmospheric Pollutants Would Slow Sea Level Rise

By Guest PostApril 25, 2013Environmentaixue hu, amsterdam, anjuli bamzai, atmospheric pollutants, black carbon, boulder, carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide emissions, claudia tebaldi, climate central, climate change, computer model, effect, geochemistry, greenhouse gases, heat trapping pollutants, hydrofluorocarbons, important factor, melting ice, methane, miami, mumbai, NASA, national science foundation, ncar, new york, noaa, rising oceans, san diego, scientist, sea-level rise, sio, soot in exhaust, this century, tokyo, tropospheric ozone, us epa, veerabhadran ramanathan, yangyang x

Decreasing emissions of black carbon, methane and other pollutants makes a difference

With coastal areas bracing for rising sea levels, new research indicates that cutting emissions of certain pollutants can greatly slow sea level rise this century.

Scientists found that reductions in four pollutants that cycle comparatively quickly through the atmosphere could temporarily forestall the rate of sea level rise by roughly 25 to 50 percent.

The researchers focused on emissions of four heat-trapping pollutants: methane, tropospheric ozone, hydrofluorocarbons and black carbon. (more…)

The Making of Antarctica’s Hidden Fjords

By Guest PostMarch 8, 2013Environmentantarctic ice sheet, Antarctica, antarctica topography, columbia university, cooling age, east antarctica, erosion rate, fjords, geologists, george e gehrels, geoscientist, geoscientists, glaciers, global climate, hidden fjords, ice sheet growth, lambert glacier, marine technician, mountains, national science foundation, ocean drilling program, pattern, peter w reiners, prydz bay, rock, rocks, sample, sea level change, sea-level rise, sediments, sidney r hemming, stuart n thomson, ty cobb, university of arizona

Antarctica’s topography began changing from flat to fjord-filled starting about 34 million years ago, according to a new report from a University of Arizona-led team of geoscientists.

Knowing when Antarctica’s topography started shifting from a flat landscape to one with glaciers, fjords and mountains is important for modeling how the Antarctic ice sheet affects global climate and sea-level rise. (more…)

Analysis of Greenland Ice Cores Adds to Historical Record and May Provide Glimpse into Climate’s Future

By Guest PostJanuary 30, 2013Environmentalpine research, Antarctica, Arctic, arctic sciences section, atmosphere, belgium, boulder, canada, change, China, climate, climate conditions, denmark, dorthe dahl-jensen, earth climate, eemian interglacial, eemian like, eemian period, france, future, future climate, Germany, global temperatures rise, greenland ice cores, greenland ice sheet, historical record, ice ages, ice sheet, Iceland, Japan, jim white, last interglacial period, national science foundation, neem, northern greenland, northern hemisphere, paleo climate models, sea-level rise, south korea, subsurface ice layers, Sweden, switzerland, the netherlands, united kingdom, united states, university of colorado, university of copenhagen, west antarctic

The International North Greenland Eemian Ice Drilling (NEEM) project results indicate that melting of Antarctic ice sheet may have contributed more to sea level rise than melting of the Greeland ice sheet some 100,000 years ago

A new study that provides surprising details on changes in Earth’s climate from more than 100,000 years ago indicates that the last interglacial–the period between “ice ages”–was warmer than previously thought and may be a good analog for future climate, as greenhouse gases increase in the atmosphere and global temperatures rise.

The research findings also indicate that melting of the massive West Antarctic ice sheet may have contributed more to sea-level rise at that time than melting of the Greenland ice sheet. (more…)

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