Earth’s glaciers are shrinking at an alarming rate. Each year they are losing more mass than is being replenished in each accumulation season.28 trillion tonnes of ice was lost from 1994 to 2017, and rates have risen by 57% since the 1990s. At present, global ice volume is shrinking at a rate of 267±16 Gt/year, […]
What does COP26 mean for global glacier and ice sheet change? Read More »
Since the early 20th Century, global air temperatures have shown an increasing trend. This pattern has coincided with the continuous release of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. The rising temperatures are already having negative effects on many of our natural environments including, oceans, deserts, and glacial landscapes, including Antarctica. The warming stripes below show annual
Antarctica and Climate Change Read More »
Antarctica is a vast ice sheet. The continent is larger than the United States of America, and has enough ice to raise global sea levels by ~58 m if it all melted. It is extremely cold, with very little surface melt. However, it is changing rapidly. Parts of West Antarctica are grounded well below sea
Changing Antarctica Read More »
How much land ice is there in the World? Most (99.5%) of the permanent ice volume in the world is locked up in ice sheets and glaciers. The Antarctic Ice Sheet is the largest store of frozen freshwater; it would raise sea levels by 57.9 m (its “sea level equivalent”, or SLE) on full melting
What is the global volume of land ice and how is it changing? Read More »
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,
Choosing the future of Antarctica Read More »
How do we estimate the global volume of ice? Sea level equivalents The IPCC and other outlets frequently indicate how much sea levels will rise under given climate change scenarios (mm sea level rise) [1]. Other times, you might see that such and such volume of ice (km3) is equivalent to so many millimetres of
Calculating glacier ice volumes and sea level equivalents Read More »
How does mass balance vary over Antarctica? | Surface mass balance in the past | Surface mass balance in the future | References | Comments | How does mass balance vary over Antarctica? Is Antarctica currently losing or gaining mass? Will this massive ice sheet grow or shrink in the future? And what effect will
Antarctic Ice Sheet mass balance Read More »
Sea level rise is probably one of the biggest threats imposed on us by climate change. Sea level rise is the reason why we study glacier recession. Our current best estimates suggest that we should expect around 60 cm of sea level rise by 2100 AD. Just a small increase in sea level is enough
How much sea level rise? | Climate change and rising sea levels | The West Antarctic Ice Sheet | How much sea level rise from Antarctica? | Comments | How much sea level rise? How much will global sea levels rise in our lifetime, or in the lifetime of our children? We need to know
Dealing with uncertainty: predicting future sea level rise Read More »
A new paper by Levermann et al. in PNAS uses the record of past rates of sea level rise from palaeo archives and numerical computer models to understand how much sea level rise we can expect per degree of warming in the future. These data suggest that we can expect a global sea level rise
Sea level rise over the next 2000 years Read More »
