Russia is attempting to claim more of the Arctic seabed, an area rich in oil, gas and minerals. It’s also expanding shipping and reopening Arctic bases. Here are two things the U.S. can do about it.
Remnants of ancient Greenland tundra were preserved in soil beneath the ice sheet.
Andrew Christ and Dorothy Peteet
Greenland’s glaciers have retreated so far that they can no longer support the ice sheet that feeds them. The ice sheet system has reached a new normal of consistent annual ice loss.
Ice floe drifting in Svalbard, Norway.
Sven-Erik Arndt/Arterra/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
The “last glacial period” saw huge, rapid climate changes. Our new research found they happened all around the world, and each time within just a few decades.
Satellite research confirms its enormous ice sheet is melting faster than most scientists predicted.
A polar bear wandering on melting pack ice in Canada, north of the Arctic Circle, during the summer 2017. Scientists say the last interglacial offers lessons for future sea level rise.
Florian Ledoux/The Nature Conservancy
Antarctica is no longer the sleeping giant of sea level rise. New research delved into the past and found when the Earth warms, its ice sheets can melt extremely quickly.
The USA has a long colonial history – as does Denmark. The USA has even tried to buy Greenland before. But this time, Greenland isn’t Denmark’s to sell.
Most of Greenland is covered by Arctic ice.
AP Photo/John McConnico
In 1867, the US bought Alaska from Tsar Alexander II for a tidy sum of $7.2 million. Trump probably wouldn’t be able to get that kind of bargain for Greenland.
Smoke from wildfires in Siberia drifts east toward Canada and the U.S. on July 30, 2019.
NASA
A researcher based in Fairbanks, Alaska, links 2019’s record-breaking wildfires in far northern regions of the world to climate change, and describes what it’s like as zones near her city burn.
Melting on top of sea ice off northwestern Greenland, June 2019.
Steffen M. Olsen/Twitter
Greenland’s ice made headlines in June, as warm weather made for unseasonably widespread melting. And though this summer is still unfolding, the human fingerprint on Greenland’s ice can’t be denied.
A small boat in the Illulissat Icefjord is dwarfed by the icebergs that have calved from the floating tongue of Greenland’s largest glacier, Jacobshavn Isbrae.
Michael Bamber
Nick Golledge, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington
Climate scientist predict that the combined effect of ice loss in Greenland and Antarctica will be more extreme weather, with impacts on agriculture, infrastructure and human life itself.
An ice-sheet in Greenland’s Inglefield Land is hiding the Hiawatha crater.
Natural History Museum of Denmark, Cryospheric Sciences Lab, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA
Climate change is transforming the Arctic, with impacts on the rest of the planet. A geographer explains why he once doubted that human actions were causing such shifts, and what changed his mind.
The vantage point from the Chinese icebreaker Xue Long in the Arctic in 2010.
(Timo Palo, Creative Commons)
With all eyes on China’s intentions in the Arctic, Singapore is flying under the radar. But the tiny Asian nation is also pursuing its own interests in the Arctic.
Research Scientist, National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), University of Colorado Boulder
Deputy Lead Scientist, National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), University of Colorado Boulder