The U.S. National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released its updated Arctic Report card earlier this week. Like many other recent reports about the condition of the north, the canary in climate change coal mine, the news is sobering; new records have been set for snow extent, sea ice extent and ice sheet surface melting. [...]
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greenland_moulin-NASA.jpg It’s been a “Goliath,” record-setting melting year in Greenland, home of the world’s second largest ice shelf. On August 8th, a full four weeks before the end of “melting season,” cumulative melting on the island had exceeded the previous record set in 2010, which included the full season. The record melt was figured by the “cumulative melting index,” created by researcher Marco Tedesco of The City College of New York’s Cryosphere Processes Laboratory to measure the “strength” of the melting season. The index is basically the number of days when melting occurs multiplied by the physical area that . . . → Read More: DeSmogBlog: "Goliath" Melting Year Shatters Records in Greenland * In case you missed the news of the huge Greenland melt this week, you can read Climate Progress’s post on it, ABC News On Greenland Ice Melt: Scientists Say They’ve Never Seen Anything Like This Before. Here’s some pictures that give an idea of the immensity of what’s happening up there, because of our [...] How hot is it this year? Maybe the breaking of thousands of temperature records across the USA so far this year didn't get your attention. Perhaps you have yet to be presented with the scary facts in Bill McKibben's latest article about Climate Change's New Math. Well if you missed those cheery bits of reporting, have a gander at this shocking graph from meltfactor.org that shows a mind-blowing change in Greenland's ice sheet "albedo." It has literally fallen off the chart in comparison to previous years. read more Arctic-MultiYear-Ice-1980-150×150 (1).jpg NASA has shown repeatedly that the Actic icecap is melting, and melting faster than climate models predict. This new visualization is stark and should be of obvious concern, simply because of the impact on sea levels. Now there is a potentially new threat. The process of shrinkage may cause a chemical reaction that could poison the Arctic ecosystem with mercury. The disappearance of old, thick ice in the Arctic means an increase in bromine released into the atmosphere. The new, thinner ice has more salt and this is where the bromine comes from. As it melts it interacts . . . → Read More: DeSmogBlog: Shrinking Arctic Ice May Cause Mercury Poisoning |
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