polar ice caps

16 Stories

Huge Piece of Ice Cap Splits Off, Worrying Scientists

42-square-mile chunk breaks away in northeastern Arctic

(Newser) - An enormous chunk of Greenland's ice cap has broken off in the far northeastern Arctic, a development that scientists say is evidence of rapid climate change. The glacier section that broke off is 42.3 square miles, the AP reports. It came off of the fjord called Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden, which...

Scientists Find Key Culprit in Antarctic Ice Melt

Underwater storms bringing warm water to polar ice: study

(Newser) - Storms aren't just a result of global warming, they may actually be causing the unstoppable Antarctic ice melt . Robots patrolling more than 3,250 feet below the Weddell Sea have discovered underwater storms are helping thaw Antarctic ice as they drive warm water toward polar ice shelves. Essentially, researchers...

'Frankly Nutty' Arctic Adventure Ends in Tragedy

Philip Goodeve-Docker dies just days into trek across ice cap

(Newser) - Three British friends set out on "one of the great polar challenges"—a 400-mile trek across the planet's second largest ice cap—last Thursday. By Saturday, one of them was dead, reports the Telegraph . Philip Goodeve-Docker and his companions planned what Goodeve-Docker referred to as a "...

Greenland, Antarctic Ice Melting Faster Than Expected

Ice sheets could send sea level up 6 inches by 2050

(Newser) - The ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are melting significantly faster than previously estimated, according to a new international report led by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Unless the trend is reversed, the melting ice sheets will push global sea levels up six inches by 2050, the scientists...

NASA Mission Monitors Polar Ice

Antarctica jet filling in for dying satellite

(Newser) - NASA has begun a mission much closer to home than usual. The agency is flying a DC-8 over Antarctica to track melting glaciers and any subsequent rise in sea levels. Operation Ice Bridge is designed to buttress the work of a fading satellite, ICESat, which is just about spent after...

Maldives Leaders Meet Underwater on Climate

Stop climate change or we're sunk, they say

(Newser) - Members of the Maldives' Cabinet donned scuba gear and used hand signals today at an underwater meeting staged to highlight the threat of global warming to the lowest-lying nation on earth. President Mohammed Nasheed and 13 other government officials submerged and took their seats at a table on the sea...

Polar Bears May Have Yet Another Worry: Sharks

Bone is found in the stomach of a Greenland shark

(Newser) - As if polar bears in the North Pole didn't have enough to worry about these days: Scientists have found the bone of a young bear in the stomach of a Greenland shark, Reuters reports. The unprecedented discovery prompts a "million dollar question," says one researcher: Do the bears...

Ice Reveals Climate History
 Ice Reveals Climate History
OPINION
Aug 3, 2008 12:19 PM CDT

Ice Reveals Climate History

Research offers window into changes

(Newser) - Over the next three summers in Greenland, a group of international scientists will unearth samples of the country’s ice core down to its very bedrock, in the hopes of painting a complete picture of Earth's changing climate. Each layer provides a dated mixture of water and air bubbles that...

Huge Chunk Snaps Off Largest Arctic Ice Shelf

Arctic's biggest ice shelf is falling apart and not regenerating

(Newser) - An 8-square-mile chunk of ice has broken off an ancient ice shelf in Canada's Arctic, the Globe & Mail reports. The Ward Hunt Shelf, the biggest in the Arctic, has shrunk over the last century from 3,500 square miles to less than 400 today. Huge cracks have appeared in...

Polar Meltdown Threatened This Summer

North Pole may be ice free for the first time in human history

(Newser) - The North Pole may become free of ice this summer for the first time in human history. Thick Arctic sea ice that normally covers the polar region has been replaced by ice that formed only in the last year and is susceptible to seasonal melting, reports the Independent. It's a...

Gore's New Hard Truth: Nothing Is Changing

Climate change too low on priority list: Gore

(Newser) - Despite the impact of his movie, An Inconvenient Truth, the success of Live Earth concerts and news stories about melting ice caps, little has changed and action is needed more urgently than ever to stem global warming, Al Gore tells the Sun. The Nobel Prize-winning former vice president believes it's...

Old Arctic Ice Melting Away
 Old Arctic Ice Melting Away 
Mar 18, 2008 7:22 PM CDT

Old Arctic Ice Melting Away

Formations older than 1 year see heavy declines

(Newser) - The Arctic's oldest, thickest ice is melting and may undermine the entire Arctic ice cap, NASA satellite photos show. Some 965,300 square miles of perennial ice, more than a year old, has melted over the past year—a 50% decrease. Losses of older, hardier frost are even greater: Three...

Island Paradise Battles Global Warming

Republic of Maldives sounds alarm about rising sea levels

(Newser) - The Republic of Maldives has a lot to fear from rising sea levels, but the chain of tiny islands in the Indian Ocean is doing something to protect itself. The nation has built a concrete wall around the capital, Male, and constructed an entirely new island 7 feet higher than...

Sailors Find Iceless NW Passage
Sailors Find Iceless NW Passage
Sep 13, 2007 8:40 PM CDT

Sailors Find Iceless NW Passage

As ice thaws, yachts glide through Northwest Passage

(Newser) - It's smooth sailing in the Arctic nowadays. Even in recent years, the ice was apt to claim adventurers who dared navigate the Northwest Passage. This year the passage has no ice. And with global warming claiming some 38,000 square miles of ice a year, the Journal reports, the Arctic...

Arctic Thaw Set at 40% by 2050
Arctic Thaw Set at 40% by 2050
Sep 7, 2007 6:47 PM CDT

Arctic Thaw Set at 40% by 2050

Researchers put 40% of Arctic underwater by 2050

(Newser) - At least 40% of the polar icecap will be gone by 2050, Seattle scientists predicted today, putting the meltdown way ahead of earlier predictions that so much ice would take a century to vanish. Greenhouse gases, which linger in the atmosphere for up to 50 years, are primarily responsible for...

5 Last-Ditch Plans to Save Earth
5 Last-Ditch Plans to Save Earth
Aug 22, 2007 2:25 PM CDT

5 Last-Ditch Plans to Save Earth

Crank up your ingenuity and combat climate change the MacGyver way

(Newser) - If reducing emissions was Plan A to save the earth from global warming, these plans from Popular Science would be more like Plan ... Z:
  1. Make more Arctic ice—out of saltwater.
  2. Cool the oceans, which feed storms with warm water, by sucking up cold water from the ocean floor with
...

16 Stories