glaciers

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

The melting glaciers of Peru have figured in previous Hot Topic posts such as the review of Mark Carey’s book In the Shadow of Melting Glacier and the report from Guardian journalist John Vidal’s Oxfam-sponsored Andean tour. I was therefore interested to come across an article on what the loss of the Peruvian glaciers implies [...]

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Moving the earth for oil

by Bryan Walker January 11, 2011

Ethical oil. That’s what Canada is producing from its massive tar sands operation, according to the newly appointed Environment Minister Peter Kent. I admit to having missed that dimension in what I have read of the oil extraction from tar sands. I understood that when the CO2 emissions from its production is added to the [...]

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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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Herald censures IPCC on flimsy grounds

by Bryan Walker February 3, 2010

In the current open journalistic season on IPCC sniping the NZ Herald has joined in with an editorial taking up new accusations made by the UK’s Sunday Telegraph and Sunday Times. The editorial begins with the Himalayan glacier error, which the IPCC itself has accepted and expressed regret for.  But the Herald has the scent [...]

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More than a metre

by Bryan Walker September 10, 2009

Sea level will rise by more than a metre by 2100 according to the authors of the third chapter in the World Wide Fund for Nature’s new Arctic report, introduced by Gareth a few days ago. Eric Rignot, one of the two authors of the chapter, is principal scientist for the Radar Science and Engineering [...]

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The PIG is flying

by Gareth August 18, 2009

The Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica is thinning four times faster than 10 years ago, a new study(*) of satellite measurements shows. Since 1994, the central portion of the glacier has thinned by as much as 90 metres, and the ice surface is currently lowering by 16 metres a year. At this rate of [...]

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On an island

by Gareth July 24, 2009

NASA’s Earth Observatory is without doubt one of my favourite web sites. As I write, the above view of sea ice off Baffin Island (or a version of it) is their Image of the Day, and aside from the obvious beauties of the swirls of melting sea ice (memorably described in a comment at RealClimate [...]

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