WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Himalayan glaciers are melting twice as fast now as they were before the turn of the century, according to a new study that relied on recently declassified Cold War-era satellite imagery. The study, which appeared in Science Advances on Wednesday, is the latest indication that climate change is eating the Himalayan glaciers, threatening water supplies for hundreds of millions of people downstream across South Asia. “This is the clearest picture […]
Tag: ice
At least 21 dead as US thaws from Arctic freeze; lowest temperature drop reported at negative 53 Celsius
by Nova SAFO Agence France Presse CHICAGO, United States (AFP) — A brutal cold spell that paralyzed the US Midwest, freezing water mains, causing power outages and canceling flights, eased on Friday, with forecasts predicting a rapid thaw. The two days of intense cold from the so-called polar vortex that descended on the US Midwest and Northeast will go down in memory for its scenes of winter at its most bitter. Blocks of ice […]
Greenland ice melts four times faster in a decade: study
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AFP) — Greenland’s melting ice, which causes sea levels to rise, disappeared four times faster in 2013 than in 2003 and is noticeable across the Arctic island, not just on glaciers, researchers warned on Tuesday. “While 111 cubic kilometers of ice disappeared per year in 2003, 10 years later this figure had almost quadrupled to 428 cubic kilometers,” the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) Space Lab said in a statement. Its researchers contributed […]
Antarctica ice loss increases six fold since 1979: study
by Kerry SHERIDAN Agence France Presse TAMPA. United States (AFP) — Global warming is melting ice in Antarctica faster than ever before — about six times more per year now than 40 years ago — leading to increasingly high sea levels worldwide, scientists warned Monday. Already, Antarctic melting has raised global sea levels more than half an inch (1.4 centimeters) between 1979 and 2017, said the report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of […]
Ice is a lifeline for the world’s coldest region
by Maria ANTONOVA Agence France-Presse OY, Russia (AFP) — Innokenty Tobonov sinks his harpoon into a long block of ice while his helpers expertly push it out of freezing lake waters onto the snow-dusted surface before sliding it towards an idling tractor. After an hour of cutting ice blocks out of the lake in temperatures of minus 41 degrees Celsius (minus 42 Fahrenheit), cold vapor has frosted his eyelashes. But this is no excuse for […]
Disappearing Arctic sea ice threatens Canada’s polar bears: expert panel
OTTAWA, Canada (AFP) — A committee of wildlife experts warned Monday that Canada’s largest land predator, the polar bear, was at risk of disappearing from its vast Arctic landscape as melting Arctic sea ice makes hunting prey a challenge. “It is clear we will need to keep a close eye on this species,” Graham Forbes, co-chair of the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) said in a statement. “Significant change is […]
Propping up glaciers to avoid cataclysmic sea level rise
by Marlowe HOOD Agence France Presse PARIS, France (AFP) — As global warming outpaces efforts to tame it, scientists have proposed building massive underwater structures to prevent an Antarctic glacier the size of Britain from sliding into the sea and lifting the world’s oceans by several meters. The more modest of two engineering schemes — which is still on the scale of a Panama or Suez Canal — to shore up Thwaites Glacier would require […]
Even moderate warming could melt Antarctic ice sheet: study
by Patrick GALEY Agence France Presse PARIS, France (AFP) — Moderate global temperature rises of just two degrees Celsius could still be enough to melt parts of the largest ice sheet on Earth and raise sea levels by several metres, experts warned on Wednesday. As the pace of climate change rapidly outstrips mankind’s attempts to rein it in, scientists delved into the distant past of glaciers in eastern Antarctica to predict what lay in store […]
Scientists confirm ice exists at Moon’s poles
TAMPA, United States (AFP) — Scientists said Tuesday they have confirmed the existence of ice on the Moon’s surface for the first time, a discovery that could one day help humans survive there. Signs of ice on the Moon have been reported by scientists for years, but previous observations could have been explained by other phenomena, such as unusually reflective lunar soil, the study authors said. “This is the first time scientists have definitive evidence […]
Antarctic sea ice shrinks for second-straight year
SYDNEY, Australia (AFP) — Sea ice cover in Antarctica has dropped to its second-lowest on record, Australian authorities said Friday, adding that it was not yet clear what was driving the reduction after several years of record-highs. The report came as scientists said earlier this week that the Arctic region was seeing record high temperatures, with sea ice covering the smallest area in winter since records began more than half-a-century ago. The Australian Antarctic […]
Ice instruments ring out coolest music in Norway
by Ilgin Karlidag Agence France-Presse FINSE, Norway (AFP) — Inside a giant igloo in a snowy Norwegian village, the sound of a horn rings out, warming the mood of a freezing audience, huddled together in -24 Celsius. But the four musicians performing are even colder: the instruments they are playing are all made of ice. The xylophone, claves and wind instruments have been painstakingly carved from ice blocks extracted from a frozen lake, and are […]
Antarctic ocean conservation protection plans put on ice
Reuters — A proposal to expand the world’s largest marine conservation park in Antarctica by linking it with smaller ones failed at a meeting as Russian and Chinese delegates did not endorse it, a conservationist attending the session said on Saturday (October 28). The plan was proposed at a meeting in Hobart, Australia, on Friday (October 27) of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, which last year created the Ross Sea […]





