The ice shelves in Canada's High Arctic have lost a colossal area this year, scientists report. The floating tongues of ice attached to Ellesmere Island have seen almost a quarter of their cover break away. Researchers say reduced sea-ice conditions and warm air temperatures have assisted the break-up.
Researchers say that surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere were warmer over the last 10 years than any time during the last 1300 years. If the controversial data derived from tree-ring records is considered accurate, the warming is anomalous for at least 1700 years. The proxies used by the researchers included information from marine and lake sediment cores, ice cores, coral cores and tree rings.
Melting alpine glaciers are revealing fascinating clues to Neolithic life in the high mountains. And, as a conference of archaeologists and climatologists meeting in the Swiss capital Berne has been discussing, the finds are also providing key indicators to climate change.
This year appears set to be the coolest globally this century. Data from the UK Met Office shows that temperatures in the first half of the year have been more than 0.1 Celsius cooler than any year since 2000. The principal reason is La Nina, part of the natural cycle that also includes El Nino, which cools the globe.
Giant sheets of ice totalling almost 20 square km broke off an ice shelf in the Canadian Arctic last week and more could follow later this year, scientists said Tuesday.
New NASA Website Focuses on Global Climate Change A new website from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., is devoted to educating the public about Earth's changing climate. The Global Climate Change website provides easy-to-understand information about the causes and effects of climate change and how NASA studies it.
NASA's press office "marginalised or mischaracterised" studies on global warming between 2004 and 2006, the agency's own internal watchdog concluded. In a report released Monday, NASA's inspector general office called it "inappropriate political interference" by political appointees in the press office. It said that the agency's top management wasn't part of the censorship, nor were career officials.
Dramatic evidence of the break-up of the Arctic ice-cap has emerged from research during an expedition by the Canadian military. Scientists travelling with the troops found major new fractures during an assessment of the state of giant ice shelves in Canada's far north. The team found a network of cracks that stretched for more than 16km on Ward Hunt, the area's largest shelf.
The UK's only mountain dwelling species of butterfly could be wiped out in Scotland because of climate change, experts have warned. Warmer temperatures are driving the mountain ringlet higher up hillsides in the search for cooler conditions.
A new NASA-led study shows human-caused climate change has made an impact on a wide range of Earth's natural systems, including permafrost thawing, plants blooming earlier across Europe, and lakes declining in productivity in Africa. Cynthia Rosenzweig of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Science in New York and scientists at 10 other institutions have linked physical and biological impacts since 1970 with rises in temperatures during that period. The study, to be published May 15 in the journal Nature, concludes human-caused warming is resulting in a broad range of impacts across the globe.