Glaciers

Scientists reconstruct collapsed Antarctic glaciers using 1960s aerial photographs

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A series of overlapping aerial photographs depicts a snowy mountain range with rugged peaks and valleys. The images, positioned in a slight arc, showcase a vast expanse of snow, ice, and rock, suggesting a remote and cold landscape.

Antarctica’s Larsen Ice Shelf has been breaking up for decades, but the 2002 Larsen B collapse was particularly dramatic. After being stable for at least 10,000 years, a large section of the shelf broke apart, with repercussions felt across the planet. The widespread changes in Antarctica have been extensively studied and published, but contextualizing and … Read more

We used 1,000 historical photographs to reconstruct Antarctic glaciers before dramatic collapse

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In March 2002, the Larsen B Ice Shelf collapsed catastrophically, fragmenting an area about one-sixth the size of Tasmania. In a paper published today in Scientific Reports, we used nearly 1,000 film photographs of Antarctica from the 1960s to reconstruct exactly what five glaciers looked like decades before the collapse of the Larsen B Ice … Read more

Alaska’s top-heavy glaciers approach irreversible tipping point

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Enlarge / The Taku Glacier is one of many glaciers that originate in the Juneau Icefield. The melting of one of North America’s largest ice fields has accelerated and could soon reach an irreversible tipping point. That’s the conclusion of new research colleagues and I who have published on the Juneau Icefield, which straddles the … Read more

Alaska’s top-heavy glaciers approach irreversible tipping point

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Credit: CC0 Public Domain The melting of one of North America’s largest ice fields has accelerated and could soon reach an irreversible tipping point. That’s the conclusion of new research colleagues and I who have published on the Juneau Ice Field, which straddles the Alaska-Canada border near Alaska’s capital, Juneau. In the summer of 2022, … Read more

Researchers warn of looming ‘death spiral’ for rapidly melting Alaska ice field | Common Dreams

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The melting of Alaska’s Juneau Icefield, which contains more than 1,000 glaciers, is accelerating and could reach a tipping point much sooner than predicted, according to research published Tuesday. The research, which was published in the journal Nature communicationshows that ice loss from the Juneau Icefield began to accelerate rapidly after 2005. The paper’s authors … Read more

Melting of Alaska’s Juneau Icefield is accelerating, with snow disappearing nearly five times faster than in the 1980s

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The melting of Alaska’s Juneau Icefield, home to more than 1,000 glaciers, is accelerating, with the snow-covered area shrinking 4.6 times faster than it was in the 1980s, according to a new study. Researchers kept close track of snow depth in the nearly 1,500 square mile icy plain going back to 1948 with added data … Read more

Doomsday Glacier’s ticking clock: Satellites reveal “powerful melt” beneath Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier

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SciTechDaily

A team led by glaciologists from UC Irvine used satellite radar data to reconstruct the impact of warm ocean water rising in a grounding zone extending several kilometers beneath the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica. The research, the subject of an article published in PNAS, will help climate modelers derive more accurate projections of sea … Read more