…and it seems to be accelerating:
Half of Antarctic Ice Shelves Could Collapse In a Flash
Antarctic ice shelves can disappear astonishingly fast — sometimes in minutes or hours — as meltwater surges through cracks in their surface. And as the atmosphere warms, this phenomenon may become more commonplace; at least half of the ice shelves on the continent are vulnerable to this process, a new study suggests.
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Scientists Discover the Fastest-Melting Spot in East Antarctica
Researchers have discovered a deep underwater trough in Antarctica that could spell doom for one of the continent’s vulnerable ice shelves.
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Greenland’s Ice Sheet is Doomed
The Greenland Ice Sheet has reached a point of rapid retreat that it couldn’t recover from even if global temperatures stopped rising instantly. This Arctic ice sheet is the second-largest ice sheet in the world, after the one that blankets Antarctica. It covers the majority of Greenland and melts into the seas via outlet glaciers, which have been rapidly losing ice for decades. Now, new research finds that today’s glacial ice loss is 14% greater than it was between 1985 and 1999. The ice sheet is losing approximately 500 gigatons of ice each year, more than is replenished by annual snowfall.
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Death Valley Sets Global Heat Record at 130 Degrees
California’s Death Valley recorded what may be its hottest ever temperature on Sunday (Aug. 16) —— a blazing 130 degrees Fahrenheit (54.4 degrees Celsius). If that National Weather Service (NWS) measurement holds up, it will have been the hottest August temperature recorded there by 3 F (1.7 C), the hottest temperature recorded in Death Valley National Park in at least a century, and one of the hottest temperatures ever recorded anywhere in the world.
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