My take on exciting new papers that have just been published.
An interesting new paper has just been published in Nature Geoscience by Romain Millan, Jeremie Mouginot, Antoine Rabatel and Mathieu Morligheim on the velocity and thickness of the world’s glaciers. They make a revised estimate of global glacier ice volume. They aren’t looking at ice in the Greenland or Antarctic ice sheets, just glaciers worldwide. …
The first edition of “A Practical Guide to the study of Glacial Sediments” (Edited by David Evans and Doug Benn) was an essential handbook to all students of glacial geology. It has helped countless undergraduate and MSc dissertation students, and my well-thumbed copy has come with me every time I go into the field. It …
A Practical Guide to Glacial Sediments, 2nd edition Read More »
Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica is currently the focus of a major scientific campaign. Why is Thwaites Glacier of so much interest, however? How much ice is there, and how much would sea levels rise if it all melted? Thwaites Glacier is roughly the size of UK (176 x103 km2). The glacier terminus is nearly …
In a new article in the journal Nature, Stephen Rintoul and colleagues present two very different visions of Antarctica’s future, from the perspective of an observer looking back from 2070. In one vision, humanity continues to exploit Earth’s natural resources (such as fossils fuels) and does little to protect the environment, and in the other, …
A new paper with a whole host of authors has just been published in Nature (IMBIE Team, 2018). It provides a new estimate of mass balance of the entire Antarctic Ice Sheet over the last 25 years, the longest and most thorough estimate of this to date. This article argues that the Antarctic Peninsula, the …
Mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet from 1992 to 2017 Read More »
Antarctic Peninsula ice shelves | Ice shelf collapse on the Antarctic Peninsula | Rifting on Larsen C | Impact of calving the large iceberg | Sea level rise following ice-shelf collapse | References | Comments | Antarctic Peninsula ice shelves The Antarctic Peninsula is fringed by floating ice shelves. They are floating extensions of the …
The Antarctic Peninsula is warming very rapidly, about six times the global average[1-3]. There has been a 95% increase in positive degree day sums since 1948[4]. Glaciers in the region are accelerating, in response to frontal thinning and recession[5]. In addition, ice shelves are collapsing[6], glacier fronts are retreating[7]. The causes for much of these …
Antarctic Peninsula has strong sensitivity to surface warming Read More »
A major new review of the last glaciation of the entire Antarctic Ice Sheet has just been published by Quaternary Science Reviews. The special issue of the journal includes a suite of review papers involving an international team of experts regarding the last glaciation of the entire Antarctic Ice Sheet. This review, which comprises six review papers …
Just published: most comprehensive review ever of the glaciation of Antartica Read More »
Marine ice sheet instability The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is the world’s most vulnerable ice sheet. This is because it is grounded below sea level, and marine ice sheets such as these are susceptible to rapid melting at their base. Fast-flowing ice streams draining the WAIS (Pine Island Glacier and Thwaites Glacier in particular) …
Davies, B.J., and Glasser, N.F., 2014. Analysis of www.AntarcticGlaciers.org as a tool for online science communication. Journal of Glaciology 60(220), 399-406. Download the preprint: Davies_et_al_2014_preprint. The following is a shorter, simpler version of the published paper. Science communication for the time-limited academic Academic research into climate change is driven by pressing human concerns. Because climate …
Analysis of www.AntarcticGlaciers.org as a tool for online science communication Read More »
