Category Archives: Polar regions

‘Wonderful experience’: Researcher’s close encounter with Svalbard polar bears

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Meteorologist says bears were not aggressive but they fired signal gun to scare them away

Katarzyna Kudłacz was preparing a breakfast of scrambled eggs at a research station on Svalbard when she looked up to see she had three unexpected guests.

Shocked and in awe, the meteorologist immediately alerted her colleagues to the female polar bear and her two cubs peering into the Polish research station in Hornsund, in the south of the Norwegian archipelago, their noses pressed up against the window.

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Polar bears risk starvation as they face longer ice-free periods in the Arctic

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Bears use ice to access food, but study of animals in Canada shows them struggling to adapt to more time on land amid climate crisis

Polar bears in Canada’s Hudson Bay risk starvation as the climate crisis lengthens periods without Arctic Sea ice, despite the creatures’ willingness to expand their diets.

Polar bears use the ice that stretches across the ocean surface in the Arctic during colder months to help them access their main source of prey – fatty ringed and bearded seals.

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Australia not prepared for how Antarctic ice changes will hit economy, scientist warns

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Exclusive: Prof Matt King says accelerated melting could transform country and affect viability of some agricultural industries

A leading Antarctic scientist has urged the Albanese government to pay closer attention to abrupt changes under way in the southern continent, warning they will affect Australians in ways that are little understood and research into them is drastically underfunded.

The head of the Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science, Prof Matt King, said he found it embarrassing how little was known about the local and global ramifications of changes including a historic drop in floating sea ice cover, the accelerating melting of giant ice sheets and the slowing of a deep ocean current known as the Southern Ocean overturning circulation.

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Will El Niño on top of global heating create the perfect climate storm?

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Rising temperatures in north Atlantic and drop in Antarctic sea ice prompt fears of widespread damage from extreme weather

“Very unusual”, “worrying”, “terrifying”, and “bonkers”; the reactions of veteran scientists to the sharp increase in north Atlantic surface temperatures over the past three months raises the question of whether the world’s climate has entered a more erratic and dangerous phase with the onset of an El Niño event on top of human-made global heating.

Since April, the warming appears to have entered a new trajectory. Meanwhile the area of global sea ice has dropped by more than 1 million sq km below the previous low.

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Half of glaciers will be gone by 2100 even under Paris 1.5C accord, study finds

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If global heating continues at current rate of 2.7C, losses will be greater with 68% of glaciers disappearing

Half the planet’s glaciers will have melted by 2100 even if humanity sticks to goals set out in the Paris climate agreement, according to research that finds the scale and impacts of glacial loss are greater than previously thought. At least half of that loss will happen in the next 30 years.

Researchers found 49% of glaciers would disappear under the most optimistic scenario of 1.5C of warming. However, if global heating continued under the current scenario of 2.7C of warming, losses would be more significant, with 68% of glaciers disappearing, according to the paper, published in Science. There would be almost no glaciers left in central Europe, western Canada and the US by the end of the next century if this happened.

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Polar bears move into abandoned Arctic weather station – photo essay

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Photographer Dmitry Kokh discovered polar bears living in an abandoned weather station in Kolyuchin, in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug of the Russian Federation, while on a trip to Wrangel Island, a Unesco-recognised nature reserve that serves as a refuge to the animals

I had dreamed about photographing polar bears for a long time. Some time ago my hobby, wildlife photography, ceased to be just a hobby and turned into a large part of my life. And if you devote so much time to an activity then your goals should be ambitious. Most of all I like to take pictures of large marine animals, whether on land or under water. Not everyone knows, but zoologists classify polar bears as marine mammals since they spend most of their time on ice floes away from land. And their paws even have webbing.

There are only a few places on the planet where polar bears can be found in large numbers. One of them is Russia’s Wrangel Island, a nature reserve under Unesco protection that is often called a polar bear maternity ward. The place is very inaccessible, which may be bad for tourists but is great for the animals.

Polar bears living in an abandoned weather station in Kolyuchin, in the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug of the Russian Federation

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Scientists watch giant ‘doomsday’ glacier in Antarctica with concern

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Cracks and fissures stoke fears of breakup that could lead to half-metre rise in global sea levels – or more

Twenty years ago, an area of ice thought to weigh almost 500bn tonnes dramatically broke off the Antarctic continent and shattered into thousands of icebergs into the Weddell Sea.

The 1,255-sq-mile (3,250-sq-km) Larsen B ice shelf was known to be melting fast but no one had predicted that it would take just one month for the 200-metre-thick behemoth to completely disintegrate.

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Rain falls on peak of Greenland ice cap for first time on record

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Precipitation was so unexpected, scientists had no gauges to measure it, and is stark sign of climate crisis

Rain has fallen on the summit of Greenland’s huge ice cap for the first time on record. Temperatures are normally well below freezing on the 3,216-metre (10,551ft) peak, and the precipitation is a stark sign of the climate crisis.

Scientists at the US National Science Foundation’s summit station saw rain falling throughout 14 August but had no gauges to measure the fall because the precipitation was so unexpected. Across Greenland, an estimated 7bn tonnes of water was released from the clouds.

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Swedish mountain shrinks by two metres in a year as glacier melts

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Researchers say climate change is driving the melting, which has seen Kebnekaise lose more than 20 metres in height since the mid-1990s

Sweden’s only remaining mountaintop glacier, which until 2019 was also its highest peak, lost another two metres in height in the past year due to rising air temperatures driven by climate change, Stockholm University says.

In 2019, the south peak of the Kebnekaise massif was demoted to second in the rankings of Swedish mountains after a third of its glacier melted. Kebnekaise’s north peak, where there is no glacier, is now the highest in the Nordic country.

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Climate crisis: Scientists spot warning signs of Gulf Stream collapse

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A shutdown would have devastating global impacts and must not be allowed to happen, researchers say

Climate scientists have detected warning signs of the collapse of the Gulf Stream, one of the planet’s main potential tipping points.

The research found “an almost complete loss of stability over the last century” of the currents that researchers call the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). The currents are already at their slowest point in at least 1,600 years, but the new analysis shows they may be nearing a shutdown.

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Climate tipping points could topple like dominoes, warn scientists

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Analysis shows significant risk of cascading events even at 2C of heating, with severe long-term effects

Ice sheets and ocean currents at risk of climate tipping points can destabilise each other as the world heats up, leading to a domino effect with severe consequences for humanity, according to a risk analysis.

Tipping points occur when global heating pushes temperatures beyond a critical threshold, leading to accelerated and irreversible impacts. Some large ice sheets in Antarctica are thought to already have passed their tipping points, meaning large sea-level rises in coming centuries.

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Greenland ice sheet on brink of major tipping point, says study

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Scientists say ice equivalent to 1-2 metres of sea level rise is probably already doomed to melt

A significant part of the Greenland ice sheet is on the brink of a tipping point, after which accelerated melting would become inevitable even if global heating was halted, according to new research.

Rising temperatures caused by the climate crisis have already seen trillions of tonnes of Greenland’s ice pour into the ocean. Melting its ice sheet completely would eventually raise global sea level by 7 metres.

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Glacial lakes threaten millions with flooding as planet heats up

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More than 12,000 deaths have already been attributed to glacial lake outburst floods worldwide

An increasing number of people are being threatened by flooding caused by glacial lakes bursting, scientists have warned.

As the planet warms and glaciers recede, meltwater accumulates and forms lakes, often as a result of ice or moraine acting as a dam. Since 1990, the volume, area and number of these glacial lakes has increased by 50% globally. When these lakes become too full there is a risk that they may breach or overflow, releasing huge volumes of water and causing catastrophic flooding.

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Chinese hotel with polar bear enclosure opens to outrage

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Harbin hotel keeping threatened species in pen overlooked by bedrooms angers animal welfare groups

A Chinese hotel built around a central polar bear enclosure for the non-stop viewing pleasure of its guests has opened to immediate condemnation from conservationists.

At Harbin Polar Land in north-east China, the hotel bedrooms’ windows face onto the bears’ pen, with visitors told the animals are their “neighbours 24 hours a day”.

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Scientists plan mission to biggest iceberg as it drifts towards island

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Team will study effects on environment of A-68A, which is heading for South Georgia

Scientists are preparing for an urgent mission to the world’s biggest iceberg, which is on a collision course with the island of South Georgia in the southern Atlantic Ocean.

The A-68A iceberg, which is larger than Luxembourg, broke off from the Larsen C ice shelf in Antarctica in 2017 and has been drifting towards the island ever since.

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Two polar bears come sniffing in the Arctic night: Esther Horvath’s best photograph

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‘I heard from the ship that two bears were walking directly towards us. I told the scientists to pack up. When they said no, I showed no mercy’

In the autumn of 2019, I joined an expedition to the Arctic. We set sail from Tromsø, Norway, on 20 September, on the Polarstern icebreaker. There were 100 people on board – 60 scientists and 40 crew – but the ship was big enough that it never felt crowded. There were people you didn’t see for days.

The plan was to find the perfect ice floe to anchor to, then drift for one year through the central Arctic Ocean and the six-month long night of the Arctic winter – about which we have almost no scientific data. The study was the first time that this oceanographic, sea ice, atmospheric, ecosystem and biogeochemistry research had ever been done at this scale. On 4 October, the ship turned off its engine in order to become frozen into the sea ice. That was the last day of daylight. The days got shorter very quickly, and the darkness was intense. Mostly it was overcast. You couldn’t see the stars. You couldn’t hear anyone speak, either, because of the constant wind.

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Arctic time capsule from 2018 washes up in Ireland as polar ice melts

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Cylinder left in ice by 50 Years of Victory ship travelled 2,300 miles to county Donegal

When the crew and passengers of the nuclear-powered icebreaker ship 50 Years of Victory reached the north pole in 2018, they placed a time capsule in the ice floe.

The metal cylinder contained letters, poems, photographs, badges, beer mats, a menu, wine corks – ephemera from the early 21st century for whomever might discover it in the future.

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Greenland ice sheet lost a record 1m tonnes of ice per minute in 2019

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Climate-driven loss is likely to be the worst for centuries, and is pushing up sea levels

The Greenland ice sheet lost a record amount of ice in 2019, equivalent to a million tonnes per minute across the year, satellite data shows.

The climate crisis is heating the Arctic at double the rate in lower latitudes, and the ice cap is the biggest single contributor to sea level rise, which already imperils coasts around the world. The ice sheet shrank by 532bn tonnes last year as its surface melted and glaciers fell into the ocean and would have filled seven Olympic-sized swimming pools per second.

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Throng of new penguin colonies in Antarctica spotted from space

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Satellite images reveal guano patches, boosting known emperor penguin colonies by 20%

Satellite images have revealed 11 previously unknown emperor penguin colonies in Antarctica, boosting the number of known colonies of the imperilled birds by 20%.

The discoveries were made by spotting the distinctive red-brown guano patches the birds leave on the ice. The finds were made possible by higher-resolution images from a new satellite, as previous scans were unable to pick up smaller colonies.

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