Nature Geoscience, July 29 This review paper assesses abrupt changes in climate over the past 30,000 years, and finds that interactions between the cryosphere and oceans produced some of the most dramatic events in this period, with persisting global consequences. Changes in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), one of Earth’s largest ocean circulation systems, […]

Journal of Geophysical Research, June 30 Glaciers across the Russian Arctic are losing accelerating amounts of ice each year, especially in the western regions; where the Novaya Zemlya glaciers decreased at rates five times that of regions further east between 2010 and 2018. Novaya Zemlya currently dominates sea level rise in the Barents and Kara […]

Nature Communications Earth & Environment, July 15 Model-based projections of Arctic sea ice extent have traditionally lagged behind real-world observations, in part because a large portion of global climate change models do not adequately capture specific Arctic conditions; especially ocean-atmosphere-sea ice interactions and heat transport, as well as measurements of sea ice volume (not just […]

Nature Communications, July 9 The Langhovde ice shelf, 3 km wide is a relatively (for Antarctica) small ice shelf on East Antarctica. Measurements found that the ocean water underneath Langhovde ice shelf is warmer than the in situ freezing point of water by around half a degree or a degree, depending on the season. This […]

Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface, June 18 When an ice sheet loses mass, the pressure it exerts on the underlying Earth surface decreases, leading to a gradual bedrock uplift and an elevation gain that could potentially help stabilize the Antarctic ice sheet, slowing loss and related sea-level rise. In particular, the fast uplift rates […]

Frontiers Earth Science, July 6 The ice resting on top of unfrozen river water – known as “floating” or “serpentine” ice – tends to form in the deeper sections of river channels with thawed riverbed sediment. Conversely, when river water freezes all the way down to the river bottom, the ice stretches out and covers […]

Geophysical Research Letters, June 16 Winter sea ice loss in the Barents-Kara seas, north of Norway and western Siberia, causes local warming in the Arctic and also produces accompanying changes in atmospheric circulation. When ice loss is moderate, this leads to lower temperatures over Eurasia. However, once sea ice loss is sufficiently large and surpasses […]

Nature Communications, July 5 This satellite study confirms that the rate of glacier ice loss has substantially increased in seven climatically different regions, spread across the entirety of Central Asia, since the 1960s. Ice loss rates have more than doubled in the Northern Tien Shan during this time period, and have accelerated nearly as much […]

The Cryosphere, June 29 Across the entire Greenland Ice Sheet, the extent of meltwater reservoirs hidden underneath layers of packed snow and ice increased by 56% from 2018 to 2019. This increase in “buried” lakes was caused by prolonged summer surface melt in conjunction with unusually high temperatures during the autumn. In the southwest region […]

Nature Geoscience, June 24 Icebergs originating from the Arctic, Greenland, and Antarctica may cause hazards thousands of kilometers away from their original source by triggering underwater landslides. Four years ago, the bottom edge of an Arctic iceberg scraped against the seafloor, tipped sideways, and broke into two pieces in the Southwind Fjord of Baffin Island. […]

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, June 22 The thawing of permafrost has destabilized bacterial and fungal networks in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, reducing their connectedness and complexity by exposing them to harsh high-altitude environmental conditions. While higher temperatures normally stimulate microbial growth, temperature increases that induce permafrost degradation reduce water, oxygen, and nutrient availability […]

Nature Communications, July 1 Record low sea ice was observed in summer 2020 in the Wandel Sea, just north of Greenland. This region is the easternmost sector of the so-called “Last Ice Area,” known for its old, thick, multi-year sea ice. Climate model simulations did not predict low sea ice concentration in this area until […]

Science, June 18 The Thwaites Glacier of West Antarctica, draining an area the size of France is one of the most vulnerable glaciers to marine ice cliff collapse because it rests nearly entirely on deep seabed. As upstream regions of the glacier rapidly increase in thickness, the edge of the glacier can collapse under its […]

The Cryosphere Discussions, June 18 New analyses of satellite images reveal that in the past 50 years, the majority of marine-terminating glaciers in northwestern and central-west Greenland retreated and lost area, with a clear acceleration of loss beginning in 1996. Between 2000 and 2020, 86% of the glaciers studied retreated. The retreat and acceleration of […]

PNAS, May 17 Today, carbon emissions (both CO2 and methane) from abrupt permafrost thaw and Arctic wildfires still are not fully included within global emissions budgets and modelling. Ignoring such feedbacks, which both directly result from rapid warming of the Arctic region, and intensify that warming further, causes governments to overestimate the remaining carbon budget. […]