ice

Ice Age

by Bryan Walker November 28, 2009

It might be about the last ice age, but global warming concerns are never far away in Brian Fagan’s latest book The Complete Ice Age: How Climate Change Shaped the World. Fagan collaborates with three other writers to explain how our understanding of the ice age has developed since the great 19th century achievement of [...]

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Ain’t no mountain high enough

by Gareth November 23, 2009

New Zealand’s glaciers are continuing to lose mass according to this year’s aerial survey of the Southern Alps by NIWA scientists. The figures released today show that over 2008-9 the glaciers lost much more mass through melt and calving than they gained from snowfall. From the press release: NIWA Snow and Ice Scientist Dr Jordy [...]

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Titanic days

by Gareth September 11, 2009

Awesome (defined as extremely impressive or daunting; inspiring great admiration, apprehension, or fear) time-lapse pictures of the calving face of the great glacier at Ilulisat, Greenland pouring ice into the ocean — the single biggest ice discharge of any northern hemisphere glacier. Greenlanders reckon this is where the iceberg that sank the Titanic originated. The [...]

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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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Start me up

by Gareth June 16, 2009

Above: a new animation of Arctic sea ice from 2000 to May 2009, from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research and KlimaCampus of the University of Hamburg in Germany. It accompanies their first contribution to this year’s sea ice forecasts — and they put the odds of a new record minimum at [...]

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Southern freeze

by Gareth June 12, 2009

While we’re on the subject of ice, Australia’s Antarctic Climate & Ecosystem Cooperative Research Centre today launched two new publications: Polar ice sheets and climate change: global impacts [PDF], and Changes to Antarctic sea ice: impacts [PDF]. Described as “position analyses”, the papers provide an excellent overview of the current state of our understanding of [...]

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North to Alaska

by Gareth June 11, 2009

Interesting times in the Arctic, as spring turns into summer and the sea ice melts towards its summer minimum. Will this year’s minimum be a new record, or will the ice bounce back towards the long term (but still downward) trend? The first scientific forecasts of the season are expected soon from the Sea Ice [...]

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Upward over the mountain

by Gareth June 11, 2009

There are chilly weeks ahead for a team of six scientists — two New Zealanders, two Chinese and and two from the USA — who are heading into the Southern Alps around Mt Cook for a winter ice core drilling project organised by GNS Science. Winter drilling is necessary to avoid the cores melting on [...]

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An ice reminder

by Bryan Walker April 22, 2009

A brief reminder that Extreme Ice, which was previewed on Hot Topic a few days ago, shows at 9.30 tonight on Sky’s National Geographic channel and a couple more times in subsequent hours.

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Extreme Ice

by Bryan Walker April 15, 2009

“It’s a strange, evil, gorgeous, horrible, fantastic place,” calls out photojournalist James Balog as he abseils a short way down into a deep hole in the Greenland ice opened up by surface meltwater rushing down perhaps to bedrock hundreds of metres somewhere below. It’s understandable Balog should have mixed feelings.  The view is stunning. But [...]

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