Climate Change is Worse than You Have Ever Imagined

On Top Of Sea Ice Death Spiral, Ocean Acidification Poised To Radically Alter Arctic

On Top Of Sea Ice Death Spiral, Ocean Acidification Poised To Radically Alter Arctic: The Arctic is the fastest changing place on earth. The most obvious and important change is the staggering loss of sea ice (see “CryoSat-2 Confirms Sea Ice Volume Has Collapsed“). In addition, “the Arctic marine waters are experiencing widespread and rapid ocean acidification,” a new study finds. This first-ever Arctic Ocean Acidification Assessment, commissioned by the Arctic Council’s Arctic Monitoring and Assessment [...]/p

Video Explains How Loss Of Arctic Ice Weakens Jet Stream, Amplifies Extreme Weather

Video Explains How Loss Of Arctic Ice Weakens Jet Stream, Amplifies Extreme Weather: We’ve written extensively about how how arctic ice loss is driving extreme weather. Jennifer A. Francis of Rutgers University’s Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences has been at the forefront of this research. She appears in many videos explaining the connection between climate change and extreme weather (see recent 40 minute video here). Here’s a short [...]/p

'Off-Limits!': From North Pole, Greenpeace Youth Activists Demand Protection for Arctic | Common Dreams

'Off-Limits!': From North Pole, Greenpeace Youth Activists Demand Protection for Arctic | Common Dreams
"Fulfilling the goal of an ambitious polar adventure, a small Greenpeace team and a group of youth ambassadors have planted a flag on the seabed beneath the North Pole declaring the region "off limits" to exploitation by oil companies, governments, and commercial interests."

Unprecedented Warming in Antarctica Causes Worst Melting in 1,000 Years | Common Dreams

Unprecedented Warming in Antarctica Causes Worst Melting in 1,000 Years | Common Dreams
"Ice is melting at a faster rate in the Antarctic Peninsula than at any time in the past 1000 years, and ten times more than it was 600 years ago, according to a new study by the Australian National University and the British Antarctic Survey, published in Nature Geoscience."

Arctic Sea Ice: The Death Spiral Continues

Arctic Sea Ice: The Death Spiral Continues: The story of the decade is the collapse of Arctic sea ice and its impact on our extreme weather (see “CryoSat-2 Confirms Sea Ice Volume Has Collapsed“). That merits the latest monthly update of sea ice volume by creative tech guru Andy Lee Robinson showing that “death spiral” is the right visual metaphor: Many experts now [...]/p

April 5 News: A Millennium And A Half Of Ice Melted In 25 Years

April 5 News: A Millennium And A Half Of Ice Melted In 25 Years: Ice that took 1,600 years to form in the Andes has melted in 25 years: “the latest indication that the recent spike in global temperatures has thrown the natural world out of balance.” [New York Times] Lonnie G. Thompson, the Ohio State University glaciologist whose team has worked intermittently on the Quelccaya ice cap for decades, reported [...]/p

The New Arctic

Study: Arctic 'Greening' Will Bring Global Ecological Consequences, More Warming | Common Dreams

Study: Arctic 'Greening' Will Bring Global Ecological Consequences, More Warming | Common Dreams
"Global warming will bring a "greening" explosion to the Arctic in the next few decades, bringing repercussions to ecosystems worldwide and creating feedback loops that will likely cause more global warming than predicted, according to a new study."

How Arctic Ice Loss Amplified Superstorm Sandy — Oceanography Journal

How Arctic Ice Loss Amplified Superstorm Sandy — Oceanography Journal: We’ve written extensively about how global warming worsened the impact of Superstorm Sandy. Now a new article, “Superstorm Sandy: A Series of Unfortunate Events?” (PDF here) connects the dots even more explicitly: Cornell and Rutgers researchers report in the March issue of Oceanography that the severe loss of summertime Arctic sea ice — attributed to [...]/p

Scientists Confirm: Arctic Sea Ice 'Collapse' at Our Door | Common Dreams

Scientists Confirm: Arctic Sea Ice 'Collapse' at Our Door | Common Dreams
"The Arctic Sea is experiencing rapid ice loss at a pace so fast that the area will soon be ice-free in warmer months, scientists confirmed in a report this week—showing a collapse in total sea ice volume to one fifth of its level in 1980."

Arctic Death Spiral Bombshell: CryoSat-2 Confirms Sea Ice Volume Has Collapsed

Arctic Death Spiral Bombshell: CryoSat-2 Confirms Sea Ice Volume Has Collapsed: The sharp drop in Arctic sea ice area has been matched by a harder-to-see, but equally sharp, drop in sea ice thickness. The combined result has been a collapse in total sea ice volume — to one fifth of its level in 1980. Arctic sea ice volume in 1000s of cubic kilometers (via Robinson) Back [...]/p

Watch a City-Sized Glacier Collapse | Common Dreams

Watch a City-Sized Glacier Collapse | Common Dreams
"The makers of the movie Chasing Ice were able to capture on film the largest ice calving ever witnessed by humans (so far, but that might not last the way things are going with our planet's climate). It was theJakobshavn Glacier (aka Ilulissat Glacier) in Western Greenland. The apocalyptic event lasted for more than an hour and when things stabilized, the glacier had retreated a full mile across a calving face three miles wide."

The Baffling Response to Arctic Climate Change | Common Dreams

The Baffling Response to Arctic Climate Change | Common Dreams
"The Arctic may seem like a distant place, just as the most extreme consequences of our wasteful use of fossil fuels may appear to be in some distant future. Both are closer than most of us realize."

Story of the Year: It’s Global Warming, Stupid | Common Dreams

Story of the Year: It’s Global Warming, Stupid | Common Dreams
"My favorite headline of 2012 was “It’s Global Warming, Stupid,” which appeared on the cover of Bloomberg Businessweek on Nov. 1, just days after Hurricane Sandy hit the Northeast."

West Antarctica Warming Three Times Faster Than Global Average, Threatening To Destabilize This Unstable Ice Sheet

West Antarctica Warming Three Times Faster Than Global Average, Threatening To Destabilize This Unstable Ice Sheet: This is a repost of a National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) news release (plus links and excerpts from other recent studies at the end). BOULDER—In a finding that raises further concerns about the future contribution of Antarctica to sea level rise, a new study finds that the western part of the continent’s ice sheet [...]/p

STUDY: Antarctica Is Heating Up Even Faster Than Previously Thought

STUDY: Antarctica Is Heating Up Even Faster Than Previously Thought: Dangerous climate-change induced melting of Antartica’s ice may be happening even faster than we think, as a new study has found that Antarctica is warming far more quickly than scientists had previously thought. The study, published in the journal Natural Geoscience, reviewed a previously spotty dataset on Antarctic temperature, correcting several gaps. The New York [...]/p

'Ominous' New Research: Earth's Coldest Regions Warming Fastest | Common Dreams

'Ominous' New Research: Earth's Coldest Regions Warming Fastest | Common Dreams
"The litany of extreme weather events this year and the mounting discoveries supplied by climate scientists have made 2012 a year in which the realities of a warmer planet make ignoring the impacts of human caused climate change no longer possible."

Study: Greenland, Antarctica shed nearly 5 trillion tons of ice over 20 years

Study: Greenland, Antarctica shed nearly 5 trillion tons of ice over 20 years
"For two decades, uncertainty over whether Antarctica was gaining mass or losing it from melting ice has made it difficult for scientists to predict the level of sea-level rise to be expected from global warming. The data showed, in the view of some scientists, that ice loss in the Arctic was being balanced by a gain in the Antarctic. Now a study published in the Nov. 30 issue of Science shows conclusively from satellite data that East Antarctica is, in fact, gaining ice, but the loss from western Antarctica and the Antarctic peninsula is twice as great as that gain.

In Greenland, the study concludes, ice is now melting at five times the rate it was in the 1990s.

Together with ice lost in Greenland, the melting in Antarctica has, the scientists say, raised sea levels worldwide by 11 mm in those 20 years, several times as much as previous measurements have shown. Combined loss: nearly 5 trillion metric tons of ice."

New Scientist Special Report: 7 Reasons Climate Change Is ‘Even Worse Than We Thought’

New Scientist Special Report: 7 Reasons Climate Change Is ‘Even Worse Than We Thought’: The NY Times isn’t the only major publication going apocalyptic on climate change. New Scientist has a new dedicated issue that makes the Times’ stories seem down-right Pollyannish. Nearly 3 years ago, the late William R. Freudenburg discussed in a AAAS presentation how new scientific findings since the 2007 IPCC report are found to be more than twenty [...]/p