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The testimony of trees: How volcanic eruptions shaped 2000 years of world history

Science Daily - Mon, 09/28/2020 - 08:05
Researchers have shown that over the past two thousand years, volcanoes have played a larger role in natural temperature variability than previously thought, and their climatic effects may have contributed to past societal and economic change.

Coldest Northern Hemisphere temps of minus 69.6 degress Celsius: Greenland, 1991

Science Daily - Sat, 09/26/2020 - 13:51
Nearly 30 years after recording a temperature of minus 93.2 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 69.6 Celsius) in Greenland, the measurement has been verified by the World Meteorological Organization as the coldest recorded temperature in the Northern Hemisphere.

Island-building in Southeast Asia created Earth's northern ice sheets

Science Daily - Thu, 09/24/2020 - 13:16
Tectonic processes are thought to have triggered past ice ages, but how? A new analysis of mountain building in the maritime tropics of Southeast Asia attributes the last ice age, which reached a maximum 15,000 years ago, to increasing rock weathering in the rising island arc from Sumatra to New Guinea over the past 15 million years, with the first ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere appearing about 3 million years ago.

Unusual climate conditions influenced WWI mortality and subsequent influenza pandemic

Science Daily - Thu, 09/24/2020 - 12:53
Scientists have spotted a once-in-a-century climate anomaly during World War I that likely increased mortality during the war and the influenza pandemic in the years that followed.

New model -- Antarctic ice loss expected to affect future climate change

Science Daily - Wed, 09/23/2020 - 15:46
In a new climate modeling study that looked at the impacts of accelerated ice melt from the Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) on future climate, a team of climate scientists reports that future ice-sheet melt is expected to have significant effects on global climate.

Stability check on Antarctica reveals high risk for long-term sea-level rise

Science Daily - Wed, 09/23/2020 - 11:47
The warmer it gets, the faster Antarctica loses ice - and much of it will then be gone forever. That's what a team of researchers has found out in their new study on how much warming the Antarctic Ice Sheet can survive.

Some polar bears in far north are getting short-term benefit from thinning ice

Science Daily - Wed, 09/23/2020 - 11:46
The small subpopulation of polar bears in Kane Basin were doing better, on average, in recent years than in the 1990s. The bears are experiencing short-term benefits from thinning and shrinking multiyear sea ice that allows more sunlight to reach the ocean surface, which makes the system more ecologically productive.

2020 Arctic sea ice minimum at second lowest on record

Science Daily - Mon, 09/21/2020 - 16:04
The 2020 minimum extent, which was likely reached on Sept. 15, 2020 measured 1.44 million square miles (3.74 million square kilometers).

Indian monsoon can be predicted better after volcanic eruptions

Science Daily - Fri, 09/18/2020 - 14:45
Large volcanic eruptions can help to forecast the monsoon over India - the seasonal rainfall that is key for the country's agriculture and thus for feeding one billion people. As erratic as they are, volcanic eruptions improve the predictability, a research team now finds. What seems to be a paradox is in fact due to a stronger coupling between the monsoon over large parts of South and South-East Asia and the El Niño phenomenon after an eruption.

Emissions could add 15 inches to 2100 sea level rise

Science Daily - Thu, 09/17/2020 - 11:28
An international effort that brought together more than 60 ice, ocean and atmosphere scientists from three dozen international institutions has generated new estimates of how much of an impact Earth's melting ice sheets.

How much will polar ice sheets add to sea level rise?

Science Daily - Thu, 09/17/2020 - 11:28
Over 99% of terrestrial ice is bound up in the ice sheets covering Antarctic and Greenland. Even partial melting of this ice due to climate change will significantly contribute to sea level rise. But how much exactly? For the first time ever, glaciologists, oceanographers, and climatologists from 13 countries have teamed up to make new projections.

Sea ice triggered the Little Ice Age

Science Daily - Thu, 09/17/2020 - 09:53
A new study finds a trigger for the Little Ice Age that cooled Europe from the 1300s through mid-1800s, and supports surprising model results suggesting that under the right conditions sudden climate changes can occur spontaneously, without external forcing.

New estimates for the rise in sea levels due to ice sheet mass loss under climate change

Science Daily - Thu, 09/17/2020 - 09:53
An international consortium of researchers under the aegis of CMIP6 has calculated new estimates for the melting of Earth's ice sheets due to greenhouse gas emissions and its impact on sea levels, showing that the ice sheets could together contribute more than 40 cm by the end of 2100.

Siberia's permafrost erosion has been worsening for years

Science Daily - Wed, 09/16/2020 - 10:34
The Arctic is warming faster than any other region on the planet. As a result, permafrost that is thousands of years old is now being lost to erosion. As measurements gathered on the Lena River show, the scale of erosion is alarming.

Antarctica: Cracks in the ice

Science Daily - Mon, 09/14/2020 - 14:11
West Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier and Thwaites Glacier have been undergoing rapid changes, with potentially major consequences for rising sea levels. However, the processes that underlie these changes and their impact on these ice sheets have not been fully charted. One of these processes has now been described in detail: the emergence and development of damage/cracks in part of the glaciers and how this process reinforces itself.

Arctic transitioning to a new climate state

Science Daily - Mon, 09/14/2020 - 10:22
The fast-warming Arctic has started to transition from a predominantly frozen state into an entirely different climate with significantly less sea ice, warmer temperatures, and more rain, according to a comprehensive new study of Arctic conditions.

High-fidelity record of Earth's climate history puts current changes in context

Science Daily - Thu, 09/10/2020 - 14:03
Scientists have compiled a continuous, high-fidelity record of variations in Earth's climate extending 66 million years into the past. The record reveals four distinctive climate states, which the researchers dubbed Hothouse, Warmhouse, Coolhouse, and Icehouse. These major climate states persisted for millions and sometimes tens of millions of years, and within each one the climate shows rhythmic variations corresponding to changes in Earth's orbit around the sun.

Humans, not climate, have driven rapidly rising mammal extinction rate

Science Daily - Wed, 09/09/2020 - 09:02
Human impact can explain ninety-six percent of all mammal species extinctions of the last hundred thousand years, according to a new study.

Deep channels link ocean to Antarctic glacier

Science Daily - Tue, 09/08/2020 - 19:05
Newly discovered deep seabed channels beneath Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica may be the pathway for warm ocean water to melt the underside of the ice. Data from two research missions, using aircraft and ship, are helping scientists to understand the contribution this huge and remote glacier is likely to make to future global sea level rise.

Ancient hunters stayed in frozen Northern Europe rather than migrating to warmer areas, evidence from Arctic fox bones shows

Science Daily - Tue, 09/08/2020 - 09:16
Ancient hunters stayed in the coldest part of Northern Europe rather than migrating to escape freezing winter conditions, archaeologists have found.

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