Two Studies on Greenland Reveal Ominous Signs for Sea Level Rise – the New York Times

Streams and rivers that form on top of the Greenland ice sheet during spring and summer are the main agent transporting melt runoff from the ice sheet to the ocean (by Maria-José Viñas courtesy of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center CC BY 2.0 DEED via Flickr).

Greenland’s mountain glaciers and floating ice shelves are melting faster than they were just a few decades ago and becoming destabilized, according to two separate studies published this week. The island’s peripheral glaciers, located mostly in coastal mountains and not directly connected to the larger Greenland ice sheet, retreated twice as fast between 2000 and 2021 as they did before the turn of the century, according to a study published on Thursday. “It got a lot harder to be a glacier in Greenland in the 21st century than it had been even in the 1990s,” said Yarrow Axford, a professor of geological sciences at Northwestern University and a co-author of the paper, published in the journal Nature Climate Change…

What the Melting of Antarctic Ice Shelves Means for the Planet – Inside Climate News

Edge of an ice shelf in Adelaide Island, off the Antarctic Peninsula (by Maria-Jose Vinas courtesy of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center CC BY 2.0 DEED via Flickr).

Antarctica’s ice shelves are the gatekeepers between the continent’s glaciers and the open ocean. As the planet warms, these shelves shrink, exposing more and more ice, which leads to more melting. This frozen continent rests under a massive ice sheet averaging more than a mile thick. But a recent study in Science Advances found that Antarctica had 68 ice shelves that shrunk significantly between 1997 and 2021, adding up to about 8.3 trillion tons lost during that time…

Greenland’s ice shelves hold back sea level rise. There are just 5 left – the Washington Post

Ice accelerating as it flows towards the coast creates heavy crevassing near the coast of Melville Bay in west Greenland (by John Sonntag/NASA’s Operation IceBridge courtesy of NASA Earth Observatory, public domain).

And now there are only five large shelves left, stretching out from their fjords toward the Greenland Sea and the Arctic Ocean. That includes three major ones — Petermann, Ryder and Nioghalvfjerdsbrae (often referred to as 79 North for its location in degrees latitude) — whose respective glaciers could ultimately account for 3.6 feet of sea level rise if they were to melt entirely — a process that would take centuries to play out…

Climate crisis costing $16m an hour in extreme weather damage, study estimates – the Guardian

The damaged metal fencing and railings along Beach Drive illustrate the power unleashed by Thursday’s storm as visitors take in the scene Friday morning © Shmuel Thaler - Santa Cruz Sentinel

The damage caused by the climate crisis through extreme weather has cost $16m (£13m) an hour for the past 20 years, according to a new estimate.

Storms, floods, heatwaves and droughts have taken many lives and destroyed swathes of property in recent decades, with global heating making the events more frequent and intense. The study is the first to calculate a global figure for the increased costs directly attributable to human-caused global heating…

September shattered global heat record — and by a record margin – the Washington Post

Image at top: Air Temperature at the Surface, 2pm October 6, 2023: Temperature across the planet has great variation in time and space. This imagery shows the predicted air temperature (at 2 meters). Pink and orange areas are hot; yellow areas are mild; and a distinct transition to blue occurs at the freezing point (Courtesy of NOAA - generated by CoastalCare.org via View Global Data Explorer website, Public Domain).

Temperatures around the world last month were at levels closer to normal for July according to separate data analyses by European and Japanese climate scientists.

September’s average temperature was nearly 1 degree Celsius (1.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above 1991-2020 levels — or about 1.7 to 1.8 degrees Celsius (3.1 to 3.2 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal from before industrialization and the widespread use of fossil fuels…

Sorry, Honey, It’s Too Hot for Camp (Podcast) – Atlantic Radio

Hot Walk (by Moodycamera Photography CC BY-NC 2.0 via Flickr).

Summer is getting too hot and dangerous, killing the childhood of our imaginations.

A heat dome in Texas. Wildfire smoke polluting the air in the East and Midwest. The signs are everywhere that our children’s summers will look nothing like our own. In this episode, we talk with the climate writer Emma Pattee about how hot is too hot to go outside. The research is thin and the misconceptions are many—but experts are quickly looking into nuances of how and why children suffer in the heat, so we can prepare for a future that’s already here…

Warming Stripes – Ed Hawkins

Warming Stripes: A representation of annual global temperatures from 1850 - 2022. Using color alone in a minimalist style climate scientist Ed Hawkins was able to intuitively convey global warming trends to the general public. The graphic has inspired many diverse applications around the world and is a powerful reminder of our climate crisis. (Ed Hawkins, National Centre for Atmospheric Science, University of Reading, using Data from Berkeley Earth, NOAA, UK Met Office, MeteoSwiss, DWD, SMHI, UoR & ZAMG, CC BY 4.0 via https://showyourstripes.info/).

An enthusiastic and prolific nature photographer for over 25 years, Steve Mandel’s diverse portfolio includes astronomical imaging, wildlife photography, and the photography of microscopic marine organisms.

Steve is much more than a photographer with a camera. When he can’t find a camera that can capture the sort of imagery he believes is required to broaden our understanding of science and widen our perception, he will just BUILD it himself.

His photographs have appeared in the New York Times, Smithsonian Books, Reader’s Digest, Forbes Magazine, Sky&Telescope, Astronomy, and used by websites including NASA. Three of Steve’s images: of Japanese Macaques, Lemurs in Madagascar, and Proboscis Monkey have been given Highly Honored Awards by the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and put on display at the Museum. He is also the recipient of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific’s International Amateur Achievement Award, and the American Astronomical Society’s Chambliss Amateur Achievement Medal.