Science Daily

Ozone layer depletion has increased snowfall over Antarctica in recent decades, partially mitigating the ongoing loss of the continent's ice sheet mass, new research finds.

The production of chlorofluorocarbons, which damage the ozone layer, has been banned as far as possible. However, other substances can also tear holes in the ozone layer in combination with ice particles, such as those found in clouds. Researchers have discovered a possible mechanism for this.

New research has found that increases in the rate at which Arctic sea ice grows in the winter may have partially slowed down the decline of the Arctic sea ice cover.

Surface melting across Greenland's mile-thick ice sheet began increasing in the mid-19th century and then ramped up dramatically during the 20th and early 21st centuries, showing no signs of abating, according to new research.

The pattern of uneven sea level rise over the last quarter century has been driven in part by human-caused climate change, not just natural variability, according to a new study.

A new study reveals that water storage declines in global landlocked basins has aggravated local water stress and caused potential sea level rise.

In August 2012, the Jakobshavn Glacier was flowing and breaking off into the sea at record speeds, three times faster than in previous years. As the glacier flowed faster, it became thinner and more unstable and in a twist, a pileup of thick ice replenished the glacier's terminus, slowing it down again. New work explaining the fast-then-slow movement of Jakobshavn may help scientists better predict how tidewater glaciers contribute to sea level rise.

Blue whales have been dropping pitch incrementally over several decades, but the cause has remained a mystery. A new study finds a seasonal variation in the whales' pitch correlated with breaking sea ice in the southern Indian Ocean. The new research also extends the mysterious long-term falling pitch to related baleen whales and rules out noise pollution as the cause of the global long-term trend, according to the study's authors.

The chances of survival for the offspring of important fish species will dramatically worsen, if the 1.5 ° C target of the Paris Climate Agreement is not achieved.

Scientists have documented a two-part climatic connection between the North Atlantic Ocean and Antarctica, a fast atmospheric channel and a much slower oceanic one, that caused rapid changes in climate during the last ice age -- and may again.

Scientists have discovered that the exchange of water between the North and South Atlantic became significantly larger fifty-nine million years ago.

A large volcanic eruption shook Deception Island, in Antarctica, 3,980 years ago, and not 8,300, as it was previously thought. This event was the largest eruption in the austral continent during the Holocene, and it was comparable in volume of ejected rock to the Tambora volcano eruption in 1815.

A new federal report finds that climate change is affecting the natural environment, agriculture, energy production and use, land and water resources, transportation, and human health and welfare across the U.S. and its territories.

Antarctica is high and dry and mostly bitterly cold, and it's easy to think of its ice and snow as locked away in a freezer, protected from melt except around its low-lying coasts and floating ice shelves. But that view may be wrong.

Large amounts of the potent greenhouse gas methane are being released from an Icelandic glacier, scientists have discovered. A study of Sólheimajökull glacier, which flows from the active, ice-covered volcano Katla, shows that up to 41 tons of methane is being released through meltwaters every day during the summer months.

Earth's latest ice age may have been caused by changes deep inside the planet. Based on evidence from the Pacific Ocean, including the position of the Hawaiian Islands.

An international team has discovered a 31-km wide meteorite impact crater buried beneath the ice-sheet in the northern Greenland. This is the first time that a crater of any size has been found under one of Earth's continental ice sheets.

When rains fell on the arid Atacama Desert, it was reasonable to expect floral blooms to follow. Instead, the water brought death. Planetary astrobiologists has found that after encountering never-before-seen rainfall three years ago at the arid core of Peru's Atacama Desert, the heavy precipitation wiped out most of the microbes that had lived there.

The first scientific assessment of polar bears that live in the Chukchi Sea region that spans the US and Russia finds the population is healthy and does not yet appear to be suffering from declining sea ice.

As an indicator of the impacts of climate change, Arctic sea ice is hard to beat. Scientists have observed the frozen polar ocean advance and retreat at this most sensitive region of the Earth over decades for insight on the potential ripple effects on assorted natural systems: global ocean circulation, surrounding habitats and ecosystems, food sources, sea levels and more.