All articles tagged with #glaciers
Global sea levels are rising at an accelerating pace driven mainly by warming oceans expanding water, with glaciers and ice sheets contributing increasingly; improved satellite and tide-gauge measurements close a long-standing discrepancy between observations and known causes, and scientists warn sea levels will keep rising for centuries due to climate inertia.
A landslide in Tracy Arm Fjord, Alaska, dislodged 64 million cubic meters of rock and generated a megatsunami almost 500 meters high—the second-tallest ever recorded, after a 1958 Alaska event. Scientists link glacier melt from climate change to more frequent collapses, warn that such hazards may be increasing, and call for wider monitoring as cruise operators reassess safety around Alaska’s fjords.
A Nordic heatwave helped drive Europe’s 2025 summer into the record books, with more than 95% of the continent baking under extreme heat, 21 days above 30C in Scandinavia, record sea-surface temperatures, rapid glacier loss, and widespread wildfires, fueling calls for stronger emissions cuts and proactive climate adaptation.
A 2010 NASA Earth Observatory image shows Gee Lake bending across the snowy rim of the Barnes Ice Cap on Baffin Island, the last remnant of Canada’s ancient Laurentide Ice Sheet. The roughly 3.2-kilometer lake sits at the edge of a glacier up to 500 meters thick, where meltwater has carved grooves that appear as ridges across the ice. The Barnes Ice Cap, exposed in this scene as snow-free at the edge, dates back about 20,000 years and is shrinking like other Arctic glaciers due to warming temperatures; a 2017 study estimated most of the ice could disappear within about 300 years. The image illustrates how small melt lakes and glacial dynamics shape this ancient landscape and how the Laurentide legacy continues to influence oceans and sea-level rebound today.
Argentina's Congress approved a reform to the 2010 Glacier Law that shifts protection of glacier regions from the national Ianigla agency to provincial authorities, making it easier to mine in glacier areas; supporters say it enables development, while opponents warn it endangers water resources since glaciers feed 36 river basins across 12 provinces and about seven million people. The reform keeps glaciers in the national inventory until provinces prove they are not strategic water reserves.
Antarctica’s Hektoria Glacier retreated 8 km in two months, with about half of it collapsing—the fastest such event on record—serving as clear real-time evidence that climate warming is accelerating; scientists warn this could hasten sea‑level rise, signal larger ice losses across the continent, and underscore the need for rapid cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, as reported by ScienceDaily, the Potsdam Institute, and related scientific meetings.
A new study maps Antarctica’s gravity hole and shows it has strengthened over tens of millions of years, coinciding with major climate shifts and glacier growth. Using global earthquake data to 'scan' the planet’s interior, researchers aim to understand how interior gravitational changes might influence ice-sheet dynamics and sea levels, though a direct causal link isn’t yet proven.
A documentary crew filming Store Glacier in Western Greenland endure a weeks-long delay and a perilous ice‑fall sequence as massive chunks collapse, nearly striking their helicopter and underscoring the Arctic’s raw power and rapid change.
Scientists mapped Antarctica’s subglacial terrain in unprecedented detail, revealing tens of thousands of previously unknown hills and ridges and a deep channel in the Maud Subglacial Basin about 50 meters deep, 6 kilometers wide, and 400 kilometers long; the work, published in Science and led by Helen Ockenden of Grenoble Alpes University, helps explain how buried features steer glacier flow and retreat and will refine predictions of future sea-level rise.
Scientists released the most detailed map yet of Antarctica’s subglacial terrain by combining high-resolution satellite surface data with glacier-flow physics, uncovering tens of thousands of previously unknown hills and ridges (and glimpses of mountains and canyons) beneath the ice. Published in Science, the work provides a new tool to forecast how the ice may respond to climate change and influence sea-level rise, while noting that the results rely on assumptions and require further observations.
A new, highly detailed map of Antarctica’s bedrock beneath the ice, created by combining satellite surface data with ice-flow physics, reveals thousands of previously unseen hills and ridges and a prominent 50m-deep, 6km-wide channel in the Maud Subglacial Basin; while uncertainties remain, the map offers a clearer view of the bedrock that could improve models of glacier movement and future sea-level rise, complementing radar surveys and aiding climate projections.
New York Times photographer Chang W. Lee captures close-up images of the Thwaites Glacier from the icebreaker Araon, showing how its shelves and ice face continuously change as it sheds ice daily in the Amundsen Sea, offering a vivid, moment-by-moment portrait of the so-called 'Doomsday Glacier'.
Melting glaciers due to climate change may increase the risk and size of volcanic eruptions, especially in ice-covered volcanoes like Iceland's Bardarbunga, potentially leading to more explosive and dangerous eruptions as the Earth's crust responds to the loss of ice weight, with global implications for other glaciated volcanoes worldwide.
A study warns that thousands of glaciers could vanish annually by the end of the century due to global warming, with the number potentially reaching 4,000 per year under worst-case scenarios, emphasizing the urgent need for climate action to prevent significant environmental and local impacts.
A study predicts that the annual rate of glacier disappearance will peak between 2,000 and 4,000 glaciers per year by the mid-2050s, depending on warming scenarios, with significant implications for ecosystems, water resources, and cultural heritage, emphasizing the urgent need to curb greenhouse gas emissions.