Satellites Observe “Traffic Jams” in Antarctic Ice Stream Caused by Tides

A fascinating press release I want to pass along.  At first I thought it was maybe good news in that rising sea levels would slow glacier drainage into the oceans but the affect is the opposite: For the first time, researchers have closely observed how the ocean's tides can speed up or slow down the …

Caltech: Robotic Ocean Gliders Discover Why Antarctic Polar Ice is Melting

Dear Readers, Find below an interesting press release I may as well share verbatim: The rapidly melting ice sheets on the coast of West Antarctica are a potential major contributor to rising ocean levels worldwide. Although warm water near the coast is thought to be the main factor causing the ice to melt, the process …

What did temperatures do as the last glacial minimum ended 120K years ago?

A commenter on the most recent edition of het's AWOGWN asks an interesting set of questions: How would temperature data have been seen during the last 10,000 years prior to the peak of each of the previous Milankovich cycles? What caused the temperature to reverse course in those cycles and why would we not expect …

Ice animations

Here are a couple of great animations of the arctic sea ice volume over the satellite era. (credit to Andy Lee Robinson, seen at Planet3) While this is not news, I think the animations make two things very clear.  One, is that anyone even giving the time of day to the notion that there is …

Happy Holiday Feasting!

Negative brownie points to anyone who feels it necessary to point out that penguins and polar bears do not cross paths in the wild!  (Oops, I guess that would include me...) (cartoon courtesy of Alex Hallatt, Creator of Arctic Circle cartoons)  

Ice sheet overview

Thingsbreak has a great overview of recent research on ice loss in the Antarctic (east and west) and Greenland. For anyone who has had enough of the freedom vs responsibility of the press discussion (mandas?), perhaps there are some interesting bits in Thingsbreak's post to mull over. I have posted on sea ice dynamics before …

CCW – Extinction: It’s not just for Polar Bears anymore

Okay, so this one is a bit of a tear-jerker and I usually like to avoid mixing sentimentality with environmentalism, but it is very informative and interesting if sad. It is greenman3610's Climate Crock of the Week from about three weeks ago and as usual well worth watching. I tend to be skeptical about anthropomorphizing …

Inside an Antarctic Time Machine

Most of us interested in climate science understand the uniqueness and importance of deep ice cores. It is truly a remarkable record of many aspects of past climate including dust, methane, sea level proxies and carbon dioxide. The video below (a YouTubed TED Talk)is a very fascinating look at what it takes to retrieve one. …

Arctic sea ice headed for a new record?

No too long ago the usual suspects were all a-twitter about arctic sea ice, which was tracking very close to the long term average. This was in late March, and though you would think a weather man would understand what weather is, this temporary upwards tic prompted the remarkable vapidity of this lead: "We've all …

Extreme ice loss time-lapse video

I found this from a comment on a Skeptical Science article (worth a read in its own right) and thought readers here might be impressed. It is from a TED talk by James Balog who has been creating fascinating and awe inspiring time-lapse videos of calving glaciers. The whole talk is about 20 minutes and …