From NASA May 14, 2020 Arctic sea ice helps keep Earth cool, as its bright surface reflects the Sun’s energy back into space. Each year scientists use multiple satellites and data sets to track how much of the Arctic Ocean is covered in sea ice, but its thickness is harder to gauge. Initial results from…
Diminishing sea ice translates to warmer ocean, more rain, and stronger trade winds University of California – San Diego Arctic and Antarctic ice loss will account for about one-fifth of the warming that is projected to happen in the tropics, according to a new study led by Mark England, a polar climate scientist at Scripps…
From NASA Feature | February 18, 2020 The image shows a thermokarst lake in Alaska. Thermokarst lakes form in the Arctic when permafrost thaws. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech By Esprit Smith, NASA’s Earth Science News Team The Arctic is one of the fastest warming places on the planet. As temperatures rise, the perpetually frozen layer of soil,…
From AAAS Review ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES The polar regions in a 2°C warmer world Science Advances 04 Dec 2019: Vol. 5, no. 12, eaaw9883 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aaw9883 Abstract Over the past decade, the Arctic has warmed by 0.75°C, far outpacing the global average, while Antarctic temperatures have remained comparatively stable. As Earth approaches 2°C warming, the Arctic…
At right: Portrait of the artist first writing on sea-ice; coastal Maine, January 1977 Guest essay by Caleb Shaw PART ONE Nearly forty years ago, back when nobody talked of Global Warming, I lived up on the coast of Maine during a series of remarkably cold winters in the late 1970’s, residing in a shack…
Note: the image below is an animation, on some browsers you may have to click on it to get it to animate. Above: Image from Unisys showing the circumpolar vortex during the last big outbreak and decay in the CONUS. Animation by Anthony h/t to Scott Sabol Fox 8 for the source. Guest essay by…
Guest essay by Jan Kjetil Andersen As Willis describes in his article on December 21, the atmosphere can be seen as a gigantic heat engine, i.e. a machine which convert thermal energy, namely temperature, into mechanical energy, namely wind. It may seem a bit strange to view the weather system as a kind of machine…
A World Meteorological Organization insider’s view of the IPCC report. Guest essay by Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy Formerly Chief Technical Advisor – WMO/UN [A note to readers: English is not Dr. Reddy’s primary language. I have made some edits to his original manuscript for clarity, but some readers may find the writing style a bit…
From the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: While the Arctic Ocean is largely a carbon sink, researchers find parts are also a source of atmospheric carbon dioxide For the past three decades, as the climate has warmed, the massive plates of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean have shrunk: In 2007, scientists observed nearly 50 percent…
From the University of Alaska, Fairbanks Study: Arctic seafloor methane releases double previous estimates The seafloor off the coast of Northern Siberia is releasing more than twice the amount of methane as previously estimated, according to new research results published in the Nov. 24 edition of the journal Nature Geoscience. The East Siberian Arctic Shelf…