Scotland had a glacier up to 1700s, say scientists
A glacier was still in place in Scotland within the past 400 years - 11,000 years less than previously thought - it has been suggested. Dundee University geographer Dr Martin Kirkbride said a glacier may have survived in the Cairngorms as recently as the 18th Century. Britain's last masses of slow-moving ice and snow were understood to have melted 11,500 years ago. Read more
Industrial Soot Linked to the Abrupt Retreat of 19th Century Glaciers
A NASA-led team of scientists has uncovered strong evidence that soot from a rapidly industrializing Europe caused the abrupt retreat of mountain glaciers in the European Alps that began in the 1860s, a period often thought of as the end of the Little Ice Age. The research, published Sept. 3 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may help resolve a longstanding scientific debate. Read more
Greenland's glaciers are not speeding up as much as previously thought, researchers have estimated. As a result, the ice rivers may be contributing "significantly less" to sea-level rise than had been thought. Previous studies had estimated that the nation's glaciers would double their flow by 2010 and continue to maintain that speed, they explained. But the team, writing in Science, said the glaciers could eventually flow faster than earlier studies estimated. Read more
Earth's glaciers are seriously out of balance with the global climate and are already committed to losing almost 40% of their volume. That is the assessment of scientists after studying a representative group of 144 small and large glaciers around the world. Their figures assume no further warming of the climate. Read more
Researchers in Chile released a series of time-lapse photos Wednesday showing the dramatic retreat of a glacier in Patagonia. The Jorge Montt Glacier is shrinking faster than any other in Chile, with its snout retreating 1 kilometer (more than a half mile) between February 2010 and January 2011, glaciologist Andres Rivera said. Read more
A new study has found that the world's glaciers are melting up to 100 times faster than any time in the past 350 years. The findings, based on the study of Patagonia, South America, have worrying implications for millions of people who rely on the slow moving bodies of ice for fresh water, a newspaper reported. The amount of ice lost from the 270 Patagonian glaciers is equivalent to filling Windermere in the Lake District more than 1,700 times. Read more
Ancient Hawaiian glaciers reveal clues to global climate impacts
Boulders deposited by an ancient glacier that once covered the summit of Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii have provided more evidence of the extraordinary power and reach of global change, particularly the slowdown of a North Atlantic Ocean current system that could happen again and continues to be a concern to climate scientists. A new study has found geochemical clues near the summit of Mauna Kea that tell a story of ancient glacier formation, the influence of the most recent ice age, more frequent major storms in Hawaii, and the impact of a distant climatic event that changed much of the world. Read more
The ice that covered much of Papua thousands of years ago is today just 1 square mile (2 square kilometres) wide and 32 yards (meters) deep. Deep crevasses crisscross the dirty ice. Glaciers worldwide are in retreat, with major losses already seen across much of Alaska, the Alps, the Andes and numerous other ranges. What makes Puncak Jaya different, aside from its location in the Pacific, is just how little is known about it. Read more
Slowly but surely an extinct glacier in a remote corner of the Peruvian Andes is being returned to its former colour, not by falling snow or regenerated ice sheets, but by whitewash. It is the first experimental step in an innovative plan to recuperate Peru's disappearing Andean glaciers. Read more