glacial melt

17 Stories

Melting Ice Coughs Up 3K-Year-Old Arrow, Good as New

Scientists race to recover artifacts uncovered by climate change before they're spoiled

(Newser) - If anyone else had come upon the wooden arrow with feather fletching and a quartzite tip, they might have thought it was new. But as the New York Times reports, glacial archaeologist Espen Finstad immediately suspected the arrow he found this month in the Jotunheimen mountains of eastern Norway was...

15M Are at Risk From Sudden Glacial Floods
15M Are at Risk From
Sudden Glacial Floods
NEW STUDY
Feb 7, 2023 7:13 PM CST

15M Are at Risk From Sudden Glacial Floods

More than half of them are in 4 countries

(Newser) - As glaciers melt and pour massive amounts of water into nearby lakes, 15 million people across the globe live under the threat of a sudden and deadly outburst flood, a new study finds. More than half of those living in the shadow of the disaster called glacial lake outburst floods...

Melting Swiss Glaciers Reveal Bodies, Crashed Plane

Hikers may have found body of missing billionaire

(Newser) - Switzerland's melting glaciers have been giving up grim secrets amid Europe's heat wave. Two bodies have been found in recent weeks, along with the remains of a plane that crashed in 1968, the Guardian reports. A police spokesman said Monday that climbers scaling the Chessjen glacier found the...

UN Report: Sea-Level Rise Worse Than We Thought

It could climb 3.6 feet by 2100: IPCC report

(Newser) - The words of Greta Thunberg were still echoing at the UN Climate Action Summit as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest report, describing evidence of climate change from one pole to the other, in ocean depths and mountain peaks. If carbon emissions continue to increase, sea level...

Glaciers in Canada's High Arctic Could Vanish

New study has alarming findings

(Newser) - All of nearly 1,800 glaciers on an island in Canada's High Arctic have shrunk since the turn of the century, with three-quarters of them seeing a significant loss, according to a new study warning many could be on their last legs. Three small ice caps disappeared altogether between...

Seas Rising at Fastest Rate in Nearly 3K Years

They could rise up to 4 feet by 2100, say scientists

(Newser) - It's "extremely likely" that sea levels rose faster in the 20th century than at any other time in the previous 2,700 years "and the rise over the last two decades has been even faster," scientists say. A new study —based on "reconstructions" of...

From Melting Glaciers, WWI 'Mummies' Emerge

Retreating ice reveals those who fought in the 'White War' in Italy's Alps

(Newser) - Time calls it "one of the strangest consequences of global warming yet"—glaciers are melting in the Italian Alps and revealing the mummified corpses of soldiers from World War I. Two, for instance, were buried in unmarked graves last year in the village of Peio, reports the...

Andean Ice That Solidified Over 1,600 Years Melted in 25

Quelccaya ice cap melt reviewed in new paper

(Newser) - The Quelccaya ice cap sits 18,000 feet above sea level, high in the Peruvian Andes, where it earns the title of world's largest tropical ice sheet. But its size is diminishing, and a team of glaciologists have come to a dramatic conclusion about the recent melting. In a...

China Muscles In on Race for Piece of Arctic Pie

Beijing increasingly aggressive as stakes get higher

(Newser) - As Arctic ice continues to melt at a disturbing pace , the "Cold War" in the region is heating up. Global superpowers, excited about the oil, gas, minerals, and shipping lanes that are being made newly available thanks to the melting ice, are vying for position in the region—and...

Satellite Spots Vast Greenland Ice Melt

97% surface melt unprecedented in 30 years of satellite observations

(Newser) - Greenland isn't just losing Manhattan-sized chunks of ice from its huge glaciers. A heat-dome that moved over Greenland on July 8 caused surface melt to soar from 40% to an unprecedented 97% in just four days, reports Live Science . Typically, just half of Greenland's surface ice melts during...

Mt. Everest Getting More Dangerous to Climb: Sherpa

Global warming changing Himalayas, melting glaciers

(Newser) - Climate change appears to be hitting even the highest place on Earth, the Himalayas. A leading Nepalese mountaineer says the mountain range, including Mount Everest, has lost much of its snow and ice, making it now more prone to rockfalls and more dangerous to climb, reports AFP . "In 1989...

French Alpine Glaciers Vanishing

Glaciers down by a quarter over 40 years

(Newser) - France's glaciers have lost more than a quarter of their area in the last 40 years, and the rate of retreat appears to be accelerating, researchers warn. The 600 or so glaciers in the French Alps covered some 145 square miles in the early '70s but that was...

Swiss Fear Vast Glacier Chunk Might Fall

There's a massive crack in the ice

(Newser) - Swiss authorities have blocked off hiking trails near the Giesen glacier in the Bernese Alps and sent a crisis team to monitor it, for fear that it’s about to shed a slab of ice the size of 12 football fields. A huge crevasse has been discovered in the glacier,...

Melting Glaciers Reveal Remains, Wreckage in Andes

Around the world, warming climate causing glaciers to retreat

(Newser) - Melting glaciers all along the Andes are giving up their secrets, revealing plane crashes and climbing accidents in a boon to historians and explorers, reports the New York Times . Among the recent finds: a plane that crashed in 1990, a 1947 British plane crash, an Austrian climber, and three Inca...

Third-World Cookstoves Ignite Carbon Debate

Cutting soot could slow climate change by 18%

(Newser) - A simple $20 stove may be the ticket to slowing global warming by nearly a fifth, the New York Times reports. Soot—otherwise known as black carbon—is the second-biggest contributor to climate change, and it spews from hundreds of millions of simple stoves in developing countries daily. Installing solar-powered...

Swiss-Italian Border Moves as Glaciers Melt

Alpine borderlines changing along with the climate

(Newser) - The rapid melting of Alpine glaciers has prompted Swiss and Italian authorities to redraw the border between the two nations, the Independent reports. Authorities believe the border will need to be moved by hundreds of feet in some places as glaciers have shifted and permafrost has disappeared, changing the course...

Global Warming Will Buoy East Coast Sea Level

Altered Atlantic current means higher flood risk from Boston-DC

(Newser) - The effect of climate change on Atlantic currents will boost the threat of flooding along the US East Coast more than glacial melting alone, a study predicts. New York, Boston, and Washington, DC, are expected to experience more shoreline encroachment and have higher risk of storm surges as changing currents...

17 Stories