Summer ice in the Antarctic is melting 10 times quicker than it was 600 years ago, with the most rapid melt occurring in the last 50 years, a joint Australian-British study showed Monday.

A research team from the Australian National University and the British Antarctic Survey drilled a 364-metre (1.194 feet) long ice core from James Ross Island in the continent's north to measure past temperat ... read more >>

The Arctic sea ice extent has been decreasing steadily for the past three decades. Scientists discuss the potential causes of this decrease. For practical reasons expert comments (comments by the invited scientists) are also separated from public comments. Anyone can comment. You need to subscribe once or use your own WordPress account. Public comments should be polite and on-topic and are modera ... read more >>

The melting of sea ice and the resulting rush for resources require effective measures to avoid damage in the Arctic, according to an annual United Nations study of emerging environmental issues that also highlight risks from chemicals and the recent spike in illegal wildlife trade.

A reduction in Arctic summer ice cover has become more intense in recent years, culminating in a record low of 3 ... read more >>

There are nine Waterkeeper chapters across Canada and they are all part of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Waterkeeper Alliance, which promotes clean water. The 2012 fundraiser in Toronto attracted an impressive collection of people from the arts, sports, business and academia.
Mr. Irving, former chief executive officer of Saint John-based Irving Oil Ltd., was impressed by the dedication of the people h ... read more >>

Flood-weary residents of North Dakota bracing for a possible record inundation got their first touch of good news on Wednesday when officials said the swollen Red River would crest at lower than anticipated levels next week. Residents in Fargo and neighboring Moorhead, Minnesota, have been filling sandbags ahead of the expected fourth major Red River flood in the past five years after unseasonabl ... read more >>

A new report on the potential effects of climate change on NOAA's Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary uses existing observations and science-based expectations to identify how climate change could affect habitats, plants and animals within the sanctuary and adjacent coastal areas.

It also outlines new management recommendations for the sanctuary, and sanctuary officials called it the first ... read more >>

The temperature sensitivity of the snowfall season (start, end, duration) over northern Eurasia (the former USSR) is analyzed from synoptic records of 547 stations from 1966 to 2000. The results find significant correlations between temperature and snowfall season at approximately 56% of stations (61% for the starting date and 56% for the ending date). ... read more >>

Eight Mississippi River locks between Muscatine, Iowa, and Clarksville, Missouri, were expected to close beginning on Friday as the rain-swollen waterway rises above flood stage, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said on Thursday. Corn and soybean prices at Gulf of Mexico export terminals jumped by at least 10 cents a bushel as the closures of Locks 16 through 24 will shut the river to commercial ... read more >>

An international team of scientists discovered a surprisingly strong regional sea-level rise which occurred during the onset of Antarctic glaciation about 34 million years ago, while the global sea-level on average lowered. In an article, published today in Nature Geoscience, scientists of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ), Utrecht University and TU Delft explain why.

We ... read more >>

Fueled by industrial greenhouse gas emissions, Earth's climate warmed more between 1971 and 2000 than during any other three-decade interval in the last 1,400 years, according to new regional temperature reconstructions covering all seven continents. This period of human made global warming, which continues today, reversed a natural cooling trend that lasted several hundred years, according to re ... read more >>