“In the first comprehensive satellite study of its kind, a University of Colorado at Boulder-led team used NASA data to calculate how much Earth’s melting land ice is adding to global sea level rise.” Quoted from the NASA press release.
“Fountain Stream is one of the largest rivers draining Malaspina Glacier. The changes in this river over the past 120 years provides an example of how glacial retreat can starve rivers of sediment and lead to erosion downstream, and an example of the complex changes that can result from climate change.”
” The storm we watched eroded 10 feet of forest floor. Beneath the tree roots, we could see the remains of beaches formed only a few decades ago, when a surplus of sand was still flowing from the glacier.” Quoted from the case study.
After a storm, the signs of rapid coastal erosion are especially obvious. Here, spruce roots trail uselessly down to the beach, where the dirt has been washed away beneath them. Coastal Erosion Slideshow
“The bottom of a glacier is not the most hospitable place on Earth, but at least two types of bacteria happily live there.” Quoted from the Penn State press release.
“Researchers are beginning their analysis of what are probably the first successful ice cores drilled to bedrock from a glacier in the eastern European Alps.” Quoted from the Ohio State University press release.
Ground Truth Trecking has a new gallery featuring some surprising and spectacular photos of Alaska’s glacial ice. Check it out. Also some great photos from their trek to Malaspina Glacier, including oil seeps, supercooled springs, the most tectonically active mountain in North America, and forested ice-calving faces.
Depending on the data analysis approach, 2011 was either the third most extensive or the sixth most extensive melting year since satellite records began in 1979.
* Data for 2011 is available before the end of the calendar year because the melt season is over.
NSF-funded researches are figuring out the ancient tectonic events that form the subglacial Gamburtsev Mountains hidden beneath the Antarctic ice cover.
NASA researchers have noticed a large crack across the Pine Island Glacer in Antarctica. They believe that it has the potential to produce an iceberg with a surface area of over 300 square miles.
Researchers at City College of New York have discovered that the Greenland ice sheet can experience cycles of extreme melting even when temperatures are not hitting record highs.
“Boulders deposited by an ancient glacier that once covered the summit of Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii have provided more evidence of the extraordinary power and reach of global change.”
Climate change has glacial lakes in the Himalayas growing to extreme capacity. Tipping-point lakes at high altitude on extremely steep slopes could be disasters waiting to happen.
This interesting time lapse video of the Columbia Glacier in Alaska clearly shows how the glacier is a conveyor of ice and has retreated year after year.
The Ilulissat Glacier in West Greenland is enormous. It is thought to deposit more ice into the ocean than any other glacier in the Northern Hemisphere.
In a study of 2767 Himalayan Glaciers the Geological Survey of India found that “2184 are retreating, 435 are advancing, and 148 glaciers show no change.”
First complete map of the speed and direction of ice flow in Antarctica, derived from radar interferometric data from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s ALOS PALSAR, the European Space Agency’s Envisat ASAR and ERS-1/2, and the Canadian Space Agency’s RADARSAT-2 spacecraft. The color-coded satellite data are overlaid on a mosaic of Antarctica created with data from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instrument on NASA’s Terra spacecraft. Quoted from the NSAS press release.
“During 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. [...] Mainly from melting ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica, and many scientists, including UW-Madison geoscience assistant professor Anders Carlson, have expected that Greenland was the main culprit.” Quoted from the University of Wisconsin-Madison news release.
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