arctic melting

On Monday, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said that for the 333rd consecutive month November 2012 brought higher than average global temperatures. In fact, the last time November temperatures dropped below the 20th century average was in 1976. Last month global average temperature over land and...[read more]

The recent rash of news alerts about the all-time-low, end of summer, Arctic sea ice extent has certainly given new food for thought about the state of the climate. Of course we shouldn’t be entirely surprised by this state of affairs as more rapid warming at the poles was anticipated long before the issue of rising emissions became a reality that we would have to deal with.[read more]

Image via NOAA

The battle over Arctic oil drilling is as intense as ever. That's particularly true for Shell Oil, which has been fighting a losing battle to drill new exploratory wells in the frigid Chukchi and Beaufort Seas where harsh weather and tougher government drilling standards are proving nearly impossible to overcome.[read more]

Arctic Glacier Melting via Shutterstock

Last week, I reported that leading scientific experts were warning we could see a “near ice-free Arctic in summer” in a decade — if volume trends continue. Here’s a short video showing those ominous trends from 1979 through early September 2012.[read more]

The sharp drop in Arctic sea ice area has been matched by a harder-to-see — but equally sharp — drop in sea ice thickness. The combined result has been a collapse in total sea ice volume.Many experts now say that if recent volume trends continue we will see virtually ice-free conditions sometime in the next ten years. And that may well...[read more]

The loss of Arctic sea ice is progressing more rapidly and clearly than just about any other indicator of global climate change. As I’ve discussed previously, the minimum summer sea ice extent (i.e. the two-dimensional area of the floating ice cap) set new record lows in 2002, 2005 and 2007. Similarly, the total volume of sea ice set...[read more]

Volodymyr Goinyk/Shutterstock

Is the Arctic region a bellwether for how climate change may reshape global geopolitics in the post-Cold War era?[read more]

NOAA recently declared this winter to be the 4th warmest on record for the contiguous United States. That sort of announcement might be expected in a warming world. But what about the relatively cold winters of 2009-2010 and 2010-2011, which featured historic blizzards in the Midwest and the East Coast? Florida had snow seven times in...[read more]

Less Summer Arctic Sea Ice Cover May Mean Some Colder, Snowier Winters in Central Europe [For Now] [T]he probability of cold winters with much snow in Central Europe rises when the Arctic is covered by less sea ice in summer. Scientists of the Research Unit Potsdam of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in...[read more]

The global warming doubters/deniers (here and here) have jumped on a confused AP story about a confused Nature study. The normally first-rate AP report Seth Borenstein just wrote an article titled “Nature and Man Jointly Cook Arctic” that begins: There’s more to the recent dramatic and alarming thawing of the Arctic region than can be...[read more]