Antarctica

The Climate Show #26: All the news that fits

by Gareth May 4, 2012

Aafter a busy month of harvesting (Gareth) and breakfast broadcasting (Glenn), the Climate Show returns with all the latest climate news: from the thinning of Antarctic ice shelves and the intensification of hydrological cycle (floods and drought, that is) to satellites capturing solar energy and beaming it down to earth, we’ve got it all. And [...]

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The Climate Show #25: Box on ice (a polar special)

by Gareth March 23, 2012

As the northern hemisphere starts to warm (rather rapidly in the USA), climate watchers’ thoughts turn to melting ice, and to tell us what happened last year and what might be in store this summer, Glenn and Gareth welcome back Greenland expert Jason Box from the Byrd Polar research Centre at Ohio State University. It’s [...]

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Kiwiblog kobblers

by Gareth March 22, 2012

New Zealand’s leading right wing blogger, National Party spinmeister and opinion poll guru David Farrar, this morning allowed himself the luxury of a rant about the New Zealand Herald‘s coverage of a new paper on sea level during the late Pliocene. In a post teasingly titled “Alarmist bullshit“, he manages to demonstrate his rudimentary grasp [...]

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Cracked PIG spawns big berg

by Gareth November 3, 2011

NASA’s IceBridge operation for this Antarctic summer has discovered that the Pine Island Glacier is in the process of calving a massive iceberg — 880 square kilometres of the floating glacier tongue is about to go floatabout, leaving the glacier snout shorter than any time since its position was first recorded in the 1940s. The [...]

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A lecture not to miss

by Bryan Walker September 17, 2011

Tim Naish’s lecture, of which we gave notice recently, is now recorded on the Climate Change Research Institute’s website. I warmly recommend it for viewing. Naish is one of the lead authors for the paleoclimate chapter for working group 1 of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report due in 2013. In this lecture he uses paleoclimate [...]

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No Penguin Café when the ice melts

by Bryan Walker June 30, 2011

At Yale Environment 360 Fen Montaigne provides a fascinating, if disturbing, report on the findings of scientists working on the effects of sea ice retreat on the polar marine food chain. Montaigne is the author of the book Fraser’s Penguins which I reviewed earlier this year and of an earlier article at Yale Environment about [...]

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The Climate Show #12: twisters, Olaf on ozone, and Google in the sun

by Gareth May 5, 2011

Ozone is the centrepiece of our show this week, with Dr Olaf Morgenstern of NIWA’s Central Otago atmospheric science lab (celebrating its 50th birthday at the moment) explaining the ins and outs of the ozone holes north and south, and their impacts on the climate system. Plus tornadoes, heatwaves, UN negotiations at an impasse, more [...]

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The Climate Show #9: Barry Brook, hot spots and melting ice

by Gareth March 18, 2011

With the terrible events in Japan uppermost in everyone’s mind, this week’s Climate Show goes nuclear, examining the prospects for the future of nuclear energy with Professor Barry Brook from the University of Adelaide. John Cook looks at what the tropical troposphere hot spot really means, and Gareth and Glenn look at mass loss from [...]

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Cambridge on ice

by Gareth March 17, 2011

From Cambridge University: the director of the Scott Polar Research Centre, Prof Julian Dowdeswell talks about his job. He has to visit Greenland and Antarctica to measure glaciers, so there are lots of pretty pictures to watch. Not a bad job, even if the implications of what he’s finding (Greenland outlet glaciers doubling in speed) [...]

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Something for the weekend: poles, podcasts and Chomsky

by Gareth February 12, 2011

Something for everyone this weekend: a few podcasts to grab, ice news from both ends of the planet, interesting reading, and a great interview with Noam Chomsky. Audio first: Radio NZ National’s Bryan Crump interviewed Prof Jean Palutikof, Director of the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility at Griffith University in Queensland at the beginning [...]

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