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Western Canada’s Glaciers Could Vanish by 2100
Posted by LiveScience: Becky Oskin on April 6th, 2015
LiveScience: Canada's glacial ice draws millions of tourists and provides drinking water to two countries, but this important economic resource could disappear by the end of the 21st century, a new study finds.
For the study, scientists devised a new computer model that predicts how glaciers will respond to future climate change. The results were dismal.
In the Rocky Mountains of Alberta and British Columbia, 90 percent of the spectacular mountain glaciers may vanish by 2100, according to research published...
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‘Fossilized rivers’ reveal clues about disappearing glaciers
Posted by LiveScience: Becky Oskin on February 4th, 2014
LiveScience: An amazing landscape left behind by melting ice sheets offers clues to the future of Greenland's shrinking glaciers, a new study suggests.
The incredible terrain is in northern Canada, which is ridged with thousands of eskers -- the sinuous, gravelly remains of streams and rivers that flowed beneath the ice. Canada was once buried beneath miles of ice, similar to the way Greenland is today. Called the Laurentide Ice Sheet, this massive ice cap covered all of Canada and parts of the northern United...
Great Lakes Water Levels Are in Unusual Decline
Posted by LiveScience: Becky Oskin on February 3rd, 2014
LiveScience: The Great Lakes share a surprising connection with Wisconsin's small lakes and aquifers -- their water levels all rise and fall on a 13-year cycle, according to a new study. But that cycle is now mysteriously out of whack, researchers have found.
"The last two decades have been kind of exceptional," said Carl Watras, a climate scientist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Water levels have been declining since 1998, Watras told Live Science....
Less Snow Threatens Antarctica’s Fragile Ice Shelves
Posted by LiveScience: Becky Oskin on January 30th, 2014
LiveScience: Antarctica's summer meltwater ponds are beautiful killers. Given an escape route down to the ice, the sapphire-blue water jacks open fractures and crevasses in ice shelves, breaking them apart.
Most ice shelves -- floating, frozen plateaus permanently attached to the shore -- have a thick blanket of snow that protects them from meltwater. The snow soaks up water like a sponge. But climate change may soon transform these downy snow blankets into threadbare sheets, putting more ice shelves in the...
Greenland’s Snow Hides 100 Billion Tons of Water
Posted by LiveScience: Becky Oskin on December 23rd, 2013
LiveScience: Big surprises still hide beneath the frozen surface of snowy Greenland. Despite decades of poking and prodding by scientists, only now has the massive ice island revealed a hidden aquifer.
In southeast Greenland, more than 100 billion tons of liquid water soaks a slushy snow layer buried anywhere from 15 to 160 feet (5 to 50 meters) below the surface. This snow aquifer covers more than 27,000 square miles (70,000 square kilometers) -- an area bigger than West Virginia -- researchers report today...
Antarctica’s Soggy Bottom: New Lakes & Streams Found
Posted by LiveScience: Becky Oskin on December 17th, 2013
LiveScience: Dimples in Antarctica's vast ice sheet frequently pop up and down like creatures in the arcade game "Whac-A-Mole" — a sign that water is forcing its way through a vast network of channels and lakes under the ice, researchers said last week at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. Scientists reported new evidence of many previously unknown "active" lakes and hollows, which fill and drain like a bathtub, as well as better maps of the drainages connecting these basins....
Shrinking Arctic Sea Ice Means Scorching US Summers
Posted by LiveScience: Becky Oskin on December 8th, 2013
LiveScience: Thirty years of shrinking Arctic sea ice has boosted extreme summer weather, including heat waves and drought, in the United States and elsewhere, according to a study published today (Dec. 8) in the journal Nature Climate Change.
The new study -- based on satellite tracking of sea ice, snow cover and weather trends since 1979 -- links the Arctic's warming climate to shifting weather patterns in the Northern Hemisphere's midlatitudes.
"The results of our new study provide further support and...
US Methane Levels Higher Than Thought
Posted by LiveScience: Becky Oskin on November 26th, 2013
LiveScience: Thanks in large part to gas wells and cow farms, the United States is spewing 50 percent more methane, a potent greenhouse gas, than previous estimates have measured, according to a new study. For the study, published Monday (Nov. 25) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from universities and government labs fanned out across the United States in 2007 and 2008 and measured levels of methane gas in the air. Though methane breaks down in the atmosphere after...
Hurricane Sandy exposes New Jersey’s marsh mistakes
Posted by LiveScience: Becky Oskin on November 2nd, 2013
LiveScience: When Hurricane Sandy's powerful storm tide pummeled New Jersey, 70 percent of the state's old submerged marshes flooded, researchers reported Monday (Oct. 28) at the Geological Society of America's annual meeting in Denver.
About 25 percent of those marshes were developed, and two-thirds of that development took place between 1995 and 2007, said Joshua Galster, a geomorphologist at Montclair State University in New Jersey. "A lot of these areas were being developed when we really should have known...
Antarctica’s scars hold clues to hidden water
Posted by LiveScience: Becky Oskin on October 6th, 2013
Livescience: Deep furrows on Antarctica's floating ice shelves mark arch-shaped channels melted out under the ice. Thinner ice floats lower, and researchers can read the corrugated surface topography like a map that mirrors what lies beneath. Now, a new study published today (Oct. 6) in the journal Nature Geoscience suggests that in some spots, these surface scars also signal where water drains from beneath Antarctica's giant ice sheets. "These features on the ice shelf are very long, so it suggests the water...