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News articles on Glaciers

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Mongabay.com news articles on glaciers in blog format. Updated regularly.

Dams mask sea level rise
(3/13/2008) Water held in man-made reservoirs is masking the true extent of sea level rise from melting ice and thermal expansion, report scientists writing in the journal Science. The researchers, from the National Central University in Taiwan, calculate that sea levels would be 30 mm (1.2 inches) higher without water stored behind dams.


NASA: warming is causing Greenland ice to melt faster than expected
(2/21/2008) Warming air temperatures are causing Greenland's ice sheet to melt faster than previously anticipated, reported NASA on Wednesday. Though unlikely, the complete melting of Greenland's ice sheet would raise global sea level by 23 feet.


Despite Arctic crocodiles, glaciers existed during extreme global warming 90M years ago
(1/10/2008) Massive glaciers extended across 50-60 percent of Antarctica some 91.2 million years even as crocodiles roamed the Arctic and surface temperatures of the western tropical Atlantic Ocean climbed to 37 degrees Celsius (98 degrees Fahrenheit), reports a study published in the journal Science.


Lack of A-bomb signatures suggest 50 years of shrinking Tibetan glaciers
(12/30/2007) Ice cores drilled last year from the summit of a Himalayan ice field lack the distinctive radioactive signals that mark virtually every other ice core retrieved worldwide. That missing radioactivity, originating as fallout from atmospheric nuclear tests during the 1950s and 1960s, routinely provides researchers with a benchmark against which they can gauge how much new ice has accumulated on a glacier or ice field.


Scientists: cut emissions now to avoid climate tipping point
(12/14/2007) Countries need to act soon to cut carbon dioxide emissions if the worst impacts of global warming are to be avoided, warned a panel of scientists speaking Thursday at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.


Future Ice Age Put on the Back Burner
(8/30/2007) Dr Toby Tyrrell of the University of Southampton's School of Ocean and Earth Science at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton has published a report in the latest edition of New Scientist magazine laying out his research that future ice-ages -- an evolutionary imperative for the planet earth -- could be pushed back some half a million years.


Melting glaciers and ice cap will drive sea level rise
(7/19/2007) Melting glaciers and ice caps will contribute more to global sea level rise this century than the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, reports a study published in the current issue of Science.


Glaciers in western China shrank 20% in 40 years
(7/13/2007) Glaciers in Western China have melted at "alarming" rates over the past 40 years, according to Chinese state media.


Glaciers speed up due to global warming
(6/5/2007) Antarctic glaciers are moving faster due to global warming, reports the British Antarctic Survey.


Greenpeace pressures China on global warming
(5/30/2007) Greenpeace stepped up the pressure on China to do something about its surging greenhouse gas emissions, launching a campaign that warns melting glaciers could hurt Chinese agriculture and hydroelectric projects. The environmental group cited a Chinese Academy of Sciences' projection that 80 percent of the glaciers in Tibet and the surrounding region could melt by 2035, though other research suggests more moderate melting.


Melting Antarctic glaciers could trigger sea level rise
(3/15/2007) Scientists have identified four melting Antarctic glaciers that could trigger a rapid rise in global sea levels according to a study published in the journal Science.


Largest tropical glacier retreating at 200 feet per year in Peru
(2/18/2007) Peru's largest glacier is melting rapidly and could complete disappear by 2012 says a glaciologist from Ohio State University. Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco last week, Dr. Lonnie Thompson said that Peru's Qori Kalis glacier is melting at a rate of some 60 meters (200 feet) per year. Qori Kalis glacier is part of the Quelccaya Ice Cap, the largest body of ice in the tropics.


Melting glaciers, not ice sheets, primarily responsible for rising sea levels
(12/11/2006) A new study says that melting glaciers are contributing more to the global rise in sea levels than melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. Of the estimated 650 billion tons of ice lost to the oceans annually, some 400 billion tons comes from the melting of small glaciers and icecaps, according to Professor Tad Pfeffer of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Only 250 billion tons -- or less than 40 percent -- comes from the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.


Greenland's ice continues to melt
(9/20/2006) Data gathered by a pair of NASA satellites orbiting Earth show Greenland continued to lose ice mass at a significant rate through April 2006, and that the rate of loss is accelerating, according to a new University of Colorado at Boulder study.


Why some Himalayan glacies aren't melting due to climate change
(8/24/2006) New research into climate change in the Western Himalaya and the surrounding Karakoram and Hindu Kush mountains could explain why many glaciers there are growing and not melting. The findings suggest this area, known as the Upper Indus Basin, could be reacting differently to global warming, the phenomenon blamed for causing glaciers in the Eastern Himalaya, Nepal and India, to melt and shrink.


Alps could lose 80% of glacier cover by 2100
(7/10/2006) The European Alps could lose 80 percent of their glacier cover by the year 2100, if summer air temperatures increase by three degrees Celsius according to a study published in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union. The research, based on modeling experiments by Swiss scientists, found that should in summer temperature rise more than three degree Celsius, only the largest glaciers and those on the highest mountain peaks could survive into next century.


Last 50 years 'unusually warm', tropical glaciers melting rapidly finds research
(6/27/2006) Researchers studying ancient tropical ice cores have found evidence of two abrupt climate shifts -- one 5000 years ago and one currently underway. The findings, published in the current issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, may have important implications for immediate future since more than two-thirds of the world's population resides in the tropics.


Africa's glaciers gone by 2025
(5/15/2006) Fabled equatorial icecaps will disappear within two decades, because of global warming, a study British and Ugandan scientists has found. In a paper to be published 17 May in Geophysical Research Letters, they report results from the first survey in a decade of glaciers in the Rwenzori Mountains of East Africa. An increase in air temperature over the last four decades has contributed to a substantial reduction in glacial cover, they say.


Long-term cooling driven by Antarctica, not glaciers in Northern Hemisphere
(4/10/2006) Researchers from Brown University have reconstructed 5-million years of climate using tiny marine fossils found in mud off the coast of South America. The climate record unearthed by the Brown team is the longest continuous record of ocean temperatures on Earth.


Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are melting find new studies
(3/17/2006) Scientists have confirmed that climate warming is changing how much water remains locked in the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, according to an article published in the Journal of Glaciology.


New glacier history sheds light on climate change
(1/9/2006) University of Alberta research that rewrites the history of glacial movement in northwestern North America over the past 10,000 years offers important clues to climate change in recent millennia.


Alaska's Columbia Glacier shrunk by 9 miles since 1980
(12/8/2005) Alaska's rapidly disintegrating Columbia Glacier, which has shrunk in length by 9 miles since 1980, has reached the mid-point of its projected retreat, according to a new University of Colorado at Boulder study.


75% of Switzerland's glaciers gone by 2050, Europe heats up
(11/30/2005) The four hottest years on record were 1998, 2002, 2003 and 2004. Ten percent of Alpine glaciers disappeared during the summer of 2003 alone. At current rates, three quarters of Switzerland's glaciers will have melted by 2050. Europe has not seen climate changes on this scale for 5 000 years, says a new report by the European Environment Agency.


Global warming shrinks sacred glacier in the Andes
(7/6/2005) The melting of a glacier in the Peruvian Andes due to global climate change is impacting the religious practices of local people, according to an article run last month in The Wall Street Journal.



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