Feed aggregator

Scientists have already observed and predicted that high ringed seal pup mortality rates are linked to poor environmental conditions like early ice breakup and low snow. Researchers have now gone a step further by coupling these hypotheses with forecasts of future spring snow and ice conditions, developing a mathematical model, and following it to some stark conclusions for populations off the Amundsen Gulf and Prince Albert Sound in Canada.

The population of Antarctic krill, the favorite food of many whales, penguins, fish and seals, shifted southward during a recent period of warming in their key habitat, researchers report.

A rapid rise in temperature on ancient Earth triggered a climate response that may have prolonged the warming for many thousands of years, according to scientists.

Greenland is melting faster than scientists previously thought -- and will likely lead to faster sea level rise -- thanks to the continued, accelerating warming of the Earth's atmosphere, a new study has found.

An international team of researchers has unveiled local drivers of amplified arctic warming.

Using risk assessments, like those used for setting occupational safety limits in the workplace, researchers determined the winners and losers of climate change in the Antarctic. They show that marine animals associated with sea ice for food or breeding, such as some whales and penguins, are most at risk from the effects of climate change, while seafloor predators and open-water feeding animals like starfish and jellyfish will benefit from the opening up of new habitat.

New research reveals the previously unknown behaviors of juvenile Emperor penguins in their critical early months when they leave their birth colony and first learn how to swim, dive, and find food.

The onset of the most recent ice age about 2.6 million years ago changed where the western Gulf of Mexico gets its supply of sediments. The finding adds new insight into how extreme climate change can directly impact fundamental geological processes and how those impacts play out across different environments.

Icy weather is blamed for multibillion dollar losses every year in the United States, including delays and damage related to air travel, infrastructure and power generation and transmission facilities. Now researchers have reported creating a durable silicone polymer coating capable of repelling ice from any surface.

New research on the '4.2 ka BP climatic event' provides rich insights into how rainfall in the northwest of South Asia changed over the critical period between 5400 and 3000 years ago.

Researchers have investigated all glacial areas in South America in more detail than ever before, from the tropical areas to the subpolar regions. Their two major findings are that the highest rate of mass loss is in the Patagonian ice sheet, and that the glaciers in the tropics have lost considerably less mass than previously projected, although this is not the good news which it might appear at first sight.

Two new species of fungi have made an appearance in a rapidly melting glacier on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic, just west of Greenland.

Antarctica experienced a sixfold increase in yearly ice mass loss between 1979 and 2017, according to a new study. Glaciologists additionally found that the accelerated melting caused global sea levels to rise more than half an inch during that time.

Variations in the axial tilt of the Earth have significant implications for the rise and fall of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, the miles-deep blanket of ice that locks up huge volumes of water that, if melted, would dramatically elevate sea level and alter the world's coastlines. New research matches the geologic record of Antarctica's ice with the periodic astronomical motions of the Earth.

Sea level rise puts coastal areas at the forefront of the impacts of climate change, but new research shows they face other climate-related threats as well. Scientists found that the energy of ocean waves has been growing globally, and they found a direct association between ocean warming and the increase in wave energy.

Heat trapped by greenhouse gases is raising ocean temperatures faster than previously thought, concludes an analysis of four recent ocean heating observations. The results provide further evidence that earlier claims of a slowdown or 'hiatus' in global warming over the past 15 years were unfounded.

Deploying a new technique for the first time in the region, geoscientists have reconstructed the longest and highest-resolution climate record for the Northeastern United States, which reveals previously undetected past temperature cycles and extends the record 900 years into the past, well beyond the previous early date of 1850.

Microscopic marine plants flourish beneath the ice that covers the Greenland Sea, according to a new study. These phytoplankton create the energy that fuels ocean ecosystems, and the study found that half of this energy is produced under the sea ice in late winter and early spring, and the other half at the edge of the ice in spring.

Cold waters that sank in polar regions hundreds of years ago during the Little Ice Age are still impacting deep Pacific Ocean temperature trends. While the deep Pacific temperature trends are small, they represent a large amount of energy in the Earth system.

The Greenland Ice Sheet emits tons of methane according to a new study, showing that subglacial biological activity impacts the atmosphere far more than previously thought.