Himalayan glaciers lost 28% of ice in last 40 years

A new study of ice mass loss of 650 Himalayan glaciers over the past 40 years has revealed that of the total ice mass in 1975, only 72% remained in 2016. Futhermore the average rate of ice loss was found to be twice as rapid in 2000-2016 compared to 1975-2000.

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Beaver expansion into Arctic tundra resulting from and accelerating permafrost thawing

A recent study uses remote sensing to document the range expansion of North American beaver into the Arctic region of northwest Alaska which suggests that permafrost thawing may be expanding. Beaver ponds and associated hydrologic changes are resulting from and contributing to thawing permafrost as pond formation increases winter water temperatures ponds and downstream.

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Uncertain source of accelerating atmospheric methane

In 2007 after a seven year plateau atmospheric methane concentration began rising while at the same time the fraction of carbon-13 in methane has been decreasing. Plausible causes of the increasing methane include higher temperatures in tropical wetlands, more livestock, biomass being replaced by fossil fuel burning, or changes in atmospheric chemistry.

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Warm/cool epochs over past 2000 years were regional until 20th century warming

Recent research has found no evidence that warm and cool periods recorded in Europe over the last 2000 years including the Little Ice Age (1300 and 1850 CE), the Mediaeval Warm Period (800–1200 CE), the Dark Ages Cold Period (400–800 CE) and the Roman Warm Period (250 BCE to 400 CE) extended over the entire globe. By contrast, the warm period during the twentieth century covered more than 98 per cent of the globe.

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First forest canopy heights from NASA’s ICESat mission

Launched in September 2018, ICESat-2 (Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2) has just begun making its first data available. Data from ICESat-2 will provide global terrain elevation and canopy height estimates as well as showing potential for estimation of forest biomass.

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Reconstructing Earth’s temperature for the past 500 million years

The Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., has charted swings in Earth’s average surface temperature over the past 500 million years to show ancient temperature extremes. To extend the record to 500 million years a new dating technique “clumped isotopes” that measures the abundance of two or more rare isotopes has been used.

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Plan to capture Antarctica ice core reaching back 1.5 million years

A new international drilling program in Antarctica is expected to capture data up to 1.5 million years ago when Earth’s glacial/deglacial cycles were about 41,000 years which corresponds to the Earth’s obliquity cycle as predicted by Malinkovitch. It may also shed light on why the climate switched to the 100,000 year cycle.

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Depopulation of the Americas by European colonization may have initiated the Little Ice Age

In a new study the removal by 1600 due to European introduced epidemics of 90% of the estimated pre-1492 population of 60.5 million in the Americas resulted in widespread landuse change which may have been the primary cause of lowered atmospheric CO2 decline which initiated the Little Ice Age.

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Europe’s Sentinel-3 global ocean-monitoring constellation in orbit

Sentinel-3B joins Sentinel-3A in Earth orbit. This constellation of satellites carry instruments to measure the temperature, colour and height of the sea surface as well as the thickness of sea ice.

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Rising seas will inundate coastal internet as soon as 2033

A recent analysis suggests that by the year 2033 more than 4,000 miles of buried fiber optic conduit will be underwater and more than 1,100 internet hubs will be surrounded by water.

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From Our Files

Correlation of temperature and CO2 for last 420,000 years from Vostok

EC Perspective: Accounting for 800,000 years of climate change

Approximately 800,000 years ago something changed in the Earth’s climate system that led to the climate then following a series of approximately 100,000 year cycles. Small, predictable changes in the Earth’s orbit about the Sun act as triggers for the glacial and interglacial periods, but other factors such as ice sheet volume, CO2 concentration, and biological feedback mechanisms are also involved.

Evidence for sea level rise of 17 meters in less than 350 years

During the last deglaciation there was several episodes of rapid and substantial sea level rise. A recent study has found that during one of these, sea level rose by about 17 meters over a period that does not exceed 350 years, but could be as low as a century.

US projected and actual CO2 emissions 2005 to 2017

Emissions from electric power generation decoupled from economic growth in US

Between 2005 and 2017 the U.S. economy as measured by real GDP expanded by about 20 %. Over this same period, emissions from power generation dropped which is evidence of a decoupling between economic growth and power generation.

Solar variability less important than greenhouse gases in global warming

Based on the trend that greenhouse gases are increasing rapidly whereas solar irradiance is changing much more slowly, the evidence reveals that the climate impact of changes in solar irradiance are much smaller in magnitude than the increase in warming due to greenhouse gases.

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