The launch of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on the Ocean and Cryosphere today, highlights the need for governments to urgently scale up and accelerate efforts to address the climate emergency and protect the world’s oceans. Drawn from almost 7,000 papers by over 100 leading climate scientists, the IPCC report represents the most … [Read more...]
Wildfires and heatwaves: how the Arctic is nearing a point of no return
Many of the globe’s far northern regions have been experiencing extreme weather events over the past two months. Plumes of smoke have been picked up by satellites from wildfires across Alaska and Siberia and Greenland has experienced rapid ice loss as usually frigid regions have experienced heatwaves and record temperatures. As the Arctic faces extreme weather events caused … [Read more...]
Natural methane release leads to increased atmospheric warming
The World Business Academy has released a 31-page whitepaper addressing a global phenomenon it calls the “Methane Accelerator”: cumulative emissions from massive deposits of methane gas, sequestered for millennia in permafrost, glaciers and marine sediment, but which are now being released due to warmer atmospheric and ocean temperatures. For at least 100 years after it is … [Read more...]
Antarctic sea ice’s sudden decrease bad news for SA
After studying 40 years of satellite data, NASA climatologist Claire Parkinson has found that levels of Antarctic sea ice have plummeted dramatically since 2014, after years of steadily increasing. The implications for South Africa could be serious. The decrease in sea ice levels in the Arctic has become a symbolic representation of climate change over the last few years, … [Read more...]
Scientists test radical ways to fix earth’s climate
Scientists in Cambridge plan to set up a research centre to develop new ways to repair the Earth's climate. It will investigate radical approaches such as refreezing the Earth's poles and removing CO2 from the atmosphere. The centre is being created because of fears that current approaches will not on their own stop dangerous and irreversible damage to the planet. The … [Read more...]
Climate crisis forces us to ask: to what do we devote ourselves?
During the times when I’m being as emotionally honest with myself as I’m capable — when I truly ponder the idea that this industrialized version of our species may well have already baked enough warming into Earth’s life-supporting biosphere that all of us may very well be on the way out — I feel at a total loss as to what to do. From that point of numbness, my life force … [Read more...]
Combined Arctic ice observations show decades of loss
It’s no surprise that Arctic sea ice is thinning. What is new is just how long, how steadily, and how much it has declined. University of Washington researchers compiled modern and historic measurements to get a full picture of how Arctic sea ice thickness has changed. The results, published in The Cryosphere, show a thinning in the central Arctic Ocean of 65 percent between … [Read more...]
Icebergs show up four months early off Newfoundland
From pole to pole the ice is melting. Winter is retreating. And much of life and even the seasons themselves appear to have been thrown off-kilter. In the Southern Ocean near the Antarctic Peninsula, krill populations have dropped by more than 50 percent due to a shortening of the season in which sea ice forms. The North Pole now experiences near or above freezing … [Read more...]
The melting Arctic’s dramatic impact on global weather patterns
Arctic sea ice is melting at a record pace - and every summer looks grimmer. This past summer saw the ice pack at its fourth-lowest level on record, and the overall trend in recent decades suggests this will only continue. "Using satellites, scientists have found that the area of sea ice coverage each September has declined by more than 40 percent since the late 1970s, a … [Read more...]
Global mean methane levels are higher than ever
At no time in the past did humans exist under conditions that we are facing now, no matter how far back you go in history. Global mean methane levels as high as 1840 parts per billion were recorded on August 4, 2015. This is the highest mean level since records began. This new record is likely to be superseded by even higher levels soon. The carbon dioxide that is … [Read more...]
Antarctic melt could cause global coastal destruction
Parts of the vast ice sheet of East Antarctica – which collectively holds enough water to raise global sea levels by 53 metres – could begin an irreversible slide into the sea this century, causing an unstoppable process of global coastal destruction, scientists have warned. East Antarctica is widely considered to be more stable than the West Antarctic ice sheet but a study … [Read more...]
