While the Siberian heatwave drove large wildfires in July, other parts of the Arctic also saw record-breaking temperatures. On July 25, the town of Longyearbyen in Svalbard, an archipelago in the Norwegian High Arctic saw temperatures reach 21.7°C, breaking the previous record by 0.4°C; with daily temperatures exceeding 20°C for four days in a row. […]
Proceedings of the Royal Society B, July 22. A team of scientists has discovered the first active leak of methane through the Antarctic seafloor, in the Ross Sea. Researchers monitored microbial communities that can consume the greenhouse gas before it reaches the atmosphere, and therefore play an important role within the methane cycle. Their work reveals […]
Nature Climate Change, June 29. Surface air temperatures at the South Pole over the past 30 years, as measured at the Scott-Amundsen station and across the Antarctic plateau, reached record-high warming levels of 0.61 ± 0.34 °C per decade, more than three times the global average. Scientists found that stronger low-pressure systems in the Weddell Sea carry warmer […]
Nature, July 22 Large sections of the massive Wilkes Basin ice sheet of East Antarctica, holding 3-4 meters of SLR collapsed only 400,000 years ago, retreating over 700 km inland from the current ice margin – dispelling theories that it had been stable for millions of years. This glacial retreat, measured through traces of uranium-234 in […]
AGU, July 21, 2020 Earth’s global “climate sensitivity” to CO2 emissions remains a fundamental question in predicting the future climate. Until now, scientists relied on a 1979 estimate of 1.5‐4.5°C per doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide (assuming no other climate forcing). For the first time in 40 years, this consensus report – part of preparation […]
Global Methane Budget, 2000-2017 (2020), July 15, 2020. A new consensus update to global methane emissions reveals that atmospheric methane increased by 8.5ppb and 10.7ppb in 2018 and 2019, respectively – two of the highest annual values of the 21st century. The current concentration of atmospheric methane is more than 2.5 times higher than pre-industrial […]
Global Annual to Decadal Climate Update, WMO, July 9, 2020. A new report by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) finds a ~70% chance that global mean temperature will rise 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels for at least one month within the next 5 years. This projection does not necessarily mean that the 1.5°C limit will have […]
2020 has been an exceptionally hot year for the Arctic, especially in High Arctic Russia. Beginning in January, an extended and persistent heat wave has smashed records, peaking at 38°C (100.4°F) in June. Since then, the extreme heat has continued. For example, the Russian town of Verkhoyansk in Siberia has seen over 11 days of […]
PNAS December 10: Models Show Abrupt Transition of Climate to Past Geologic States Main Messages: Already in 2030, Earth’s climate will approach that of the mid-Pliocene (-3 million years) if current emissions levels continue unabated, eg RCP8.5 through 2030. Pliocene (–3 million), temps 2.8°-4.6° above pre-industrial, with 20+ m. SLR If emissions continue on an […]
Note: ICCI often gets questions about the unusually cold weather that occasionally has begun to hit sub-Arctic Europe and North America. Below in brief is an explanation and direction to other resources and articles: The so-called “polar vortex” is a regular upper-atmosphere phenomenon that normally, stays centered over the North Pole. It comprises very high-level […]
May IceBlog: Anything But Pro Forma Note: Statements at Arctic Council ministerial meetings are often very pro-forma. The May 11 statement in Fairbanks by Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström was anything but — instead it was a call to science-based, and economics-based, action: Excellencies, colleagues, Arctic friends, it is truly a great pleasure to be […]
ICCI’s hallmark is a deep belief in the power of solid science to convince policymakers and decision makers to change course before climate change overtakes us all. Not all leaders, and not all at once — but enough to make a difference. We have been spreading the increasingly-clear message from the cryosphere (snow and ice) […]
“These people know nothing! Nothing!” This outburst from an eminent Antarctic researcher was as unexpected for me as it was emphatic. It came just outside a seminar during one of the climate negotiating sessions before Copenhagen, where I thought the negotiators present (many former colleagues, known from my own years in diplomacy) had asked intelligent […]
Fire in the Fields – “Burning” the Cryosphere “Open burning” refers to a common agricultural practice found today throughout the world: the regular and periodic burning of lands, supposedly cheaply and quickly to remove excess vegetation. This may be crop residue such as straw, weeds, lands to be cleared, or in forestry understory prior to […]
What Happens in the Arctic…. As world leaders, including President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and a number of foreign ministers, head to Alaska this weekend to discuss the threat of climate change in the Arctic (and ICCI will be there, with our European Director Dr. Svante Bodin addressing the ministers on black carbon), […]