While it is undeniable that we are ramping up our actions against climate change, it is hard to deny that global warming is getting scarier every week. Here is a quick selection of horror stories I have collected this summer.
Antarctica
Both poles are warming up fast
While some people still want to deny climate change or that Mankind has anything to do with it, the facts are stubborn: our planet is warming fast and it is our handy work.
Antarctica is melting faster and faster
According to recent data Antarctica appears to warm much faster than previously thought. This could have dire consequences for rising sea levels and the hundreds of million of people living in coastal regions worldwide.
Some bad news on climate and the Antarctic
Three news on climate change got my attention the past week, each one could have been worthy of a full post. First and foremost, it seems scientists have underestimated the rate of global warming.
Worth an article – my November 2012 tweets
I have been committed since January 2007 to bring you each month a selection of the latest headlines and best researches on sustainable development, climate change and the world energy sector.
However, I don’t blog as much as I would like to and generally write around 25 posts per month. But many more news are worth reading. This is why I use Twitter to share dozens of news that are worth your time.
I believe it offers a good complement to this website. So if you are on Twitter and like this selection, don’t hesitate to start following me.
Earth is losing 500 billion tons of ice a year
To the NASA : ” Using satellite measurements (…), the researchers measured ice loss in all of Earth’s land ice between 2003 and 2010, with particular emphasis on glaciers and ice caps outside of Greenland and Antarctica. ” ” The total global ice mass lost from Greenland, Antarctica and Earth’s glaciers and ice caps during … Read more
Greenland and Antarctica are melting much faster than predicted
To CleanTechies : ” According to a new NASA-funded study, Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass at a much faster rate than previous model forecasts have predicted. “ ” Results suggest that the ice sheets, found only in Antarctica and Greenland, are melting faster than mountain glaciers and ice caps and are poised … Read more
Coming soon to the Antartic : a garbage patch
I previously wrote that both the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans are massively polluted by plastic. The same plastic, so convenient and so ubiquituous that it is becoming a curse of our time. Now to Discovery News : Much of the global ocean remains uncharted in terms of pollution, (…). And now even the most remote, … Read more
Glaciers are melting faster and faster
The UNEP and the World Glacier Monitoring Service published a report showing how glaciers all around the world are melting faster and faster, thus threatening the water supplies of hundred of millions of people. The report then noted that “the average annual melting rate of glaciers doubled after the turn of the millennium.” This scary … Read more
Both poles are melting faster and faster
As bad news came from Antarctica I thought it would be interesting to check out how the poles are warming. I wrote in December that Antarctica keeps on melting and it seems this phenomenon is aggravating.
As the BBC noted “Scientists say the collapse could mean the Wilkins Ice Shelf is on the brink of breaking away, and provides further evidence of rapid change in the region.”
The Arctic also warms significantly as recent studies carried out during the International Polar Year have shown. Both regions are warming more than any other.
Antarctica keeps on melting
The European Space Agency (ESA) reported a few days ago that new rifts have developed on the Wilkins Ice Shelf. This could lead to the melting of a lot of ice in Antarctica
Since it would take a melting of only five percent of the sixth continent for sea levels to rise by three meters, each sign of decreasing ice amounts there from has to be reported.
Even if these rifts won’t lead directly to such a phenomenon, they show a direct sign that something is wrong with our climate.
What if Antarctica’s ice melt ?
As we saw three weeks ago in my article on the scientific data on level sea rise, the melting of both Arctic and Antarctica are one of the main components of the phenomenon.
Even if the Arctic is quite well documented, Antarctica is not that well known. 25 times bigger than France and weighting billions of tons of ice, the sixth continent is a huge unknown.
If a single percent of all this ice melt, it would represent a sea level rise by a staggering 60 centimeters (two feet)… A serious danger I will study today.