glaciers

Messages from a sizzling continent: Salinger on the Aussie heatwave

by Gareth January 20, 2013

This op-ed by climate scientist Jim Salinger first appeared in print editions of the New Zealand Herald last Tuesday. Global warming is not a phenomenon for future generations to deal with: it has arrived. And more frequent heat waves and climate extremes are part of this phenomenon. As I watch from my summer roost in [...]

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Bad news but great pictures: dating NZ’s shrinking glaciers shows strong link between ice loss and CO2 increases

by Gareth September 13, 2012

Here’s a superb video from the Department of Education at the American Museum of Natural History, showing how NZ and US scientists are examining the precise timing of glacier advances and retreats in the Mackenzie country around Lake Pukaki using surface exposure dating. Like all good geologists they use big hammers and small explosives to [...]

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Greenland’s extraordinary summer: melting records and ice island setting sail

by Gareth July 26, 2012

July has been an amazing month in Greenland. The Petermann Glacier has given birth to another huge ice island — taking its terminus further back up its fjord than at any time in the last 100 years (at least), record high temperatures have been recorded at the summit of the ice sheet at 3,200 meters, [...]

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Jim Renwick on the state of climate science

by Bryan Walker July 24, 2012

I have been listening to a lecture by Victoria University climate scientist, James Renwick, who has recently moved to the university from his post as principal climate scientist at NIWA.  In the seminar he sets out in broad terms some of the latest developments in the science. It’s a very clear summation, with some recent [...]

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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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Peruvian glacier melt challenges US security

by Bryan Walker January 19, 2011
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Moving the earth for oil

by Bryan Walker January 11, 2011
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Albert the knowledge penguin on climate

by Gareth January 3, 2011

Albert the Knowledge Penguin explains the real story of climate change, from the science to the politics, and gets it right. Read the rest of the story here. British cartoonist Darryl Cunningham has clearly done a lot of research, got a good grasp of the issues — and he eviscerates the Koch and Scaife-funded campaign [...]

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In the Shadow of Melting Glaciers

by Bryan Walker May 26, 2010

Adapting to climate change is a complex matter for human communities, as Mark Carey makes abundantly clear in his newly published book In the Shadow of Melting Glaciers: Climate Change and Andean Society. Carey is a historian and explores nearly sixty years of disaster response in Peru since the beginning of his story in 1941 [...]

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Down to the sea

by Bryan Walker May 6, 2010

An interview with climatologist Ellen Mosley-Thompson published yesterday in Yale Environment 360is a reminder that for those working with ice there’s not much doubt about where we’re heading. She spent six weeks of the summer on her ninth visit to Antarctica drilling ice cores on the Antarctic Peninsula, one of the fastest-warming places on earth. [...]

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