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glaciers

When the Atlantic Was a Buried, Freshwater sea

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Atlantic Sea

The Arctic Ocean was once a pool of fresh water capped with an ice shelf half as thick as the Grand Canyon is deep. If that’s hard to envision, don’t despair. Scientists were surprised at the discovery, published Wednesday (Feb. 3) in the journal Nature, as well. The trick to envisioning this odd arrangement is to think about the relationship between ice sheets and the ocean. When ice sheets melt, they dump water into the ocean, raising the sea level. But when ice sheets grow, as they have during Earth’s glacial periods, sea level drops. Now, new research shows that … Read more

SPACE: An Icebound Mars?

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ice planet - deposit photos

Early Mars may not have been quite the warm, wet paradise scientists have hoped for — not if the valleys scarring its surface work the same way as their counterparts here on Earth do. That’s the conclusion of new research that tried to suss out what the Red Planet really looked like during its first billion years by analyzing more than 10,000 segments of valleys on Mars. In particular, the scientists were inspired by the look of Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic, which is dry and frigid. According to the new analysis, some Martian valleys may have been formed … Read more

CLIMATE CHANGE: The Fire Age, and Much More

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climate change - pixabay

Here’s our periodic round-up of climate-change news: California Wildfires Signal the Arrival of a Planetary Fire Agehttps://www.livescience.com/earth-has-entered-pyrocene-fire-age.htmlAnother autumn, more fires, more refugees and incinerated homes. For California, flames have become the colors of fall. Free-burning fire is the proximate provocation for the havoc, since its ember storms are engulfing landscapes. But in the hands of humans, combustion is also the deeper cause. Modern societies are burning lithic landscapes – once-living biomass now fossilized into coal, gas and oil – which is aggravating the burning of living landscapes. The World’s Fastest-Thinning Glacier Identifiedhttps://www.livescience.com/fastest-thinning-glacier-andes.htmlA glacier in Patagonia that has lost half its … Read more

CLIMATE CHANGE: Antarctica, World Map; Ozone; Birds; & More

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climate change - pixabay

‘Upside-Down Rivers’ of Warm Water Are Carving Antarctica to PiecesEarth’s frozen places are losing ground fast. In Antarctica, melted ice spills into the ocean at rate of about 155 billion tons (140 billion metric tons) per year — an amount so confoundingly huge that it’s easier just to call it “chilling” and “unprecedented,” as a recent U.N. report did. Those numbers will only increase as humans continue polluting the air with record amounts of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.https://www.livescience.com/antarctica-ice-shelf-upside-down-rivers.html Scientists Want to Make a 3D Map of the Entire World Before Climate Change Ruins ItEarth is changing faster than anyone can comprehend. … Read more