Sea ice is thinning at an alarming rate. Snow is shifting to rain. And humans worldwide are increasingly feeling the impact of what happens in the seemingly distant Arctic.
People walked down a flood sidewalk in Annapolis, Maryland, on Oct. 29, 2021.
AP Photo/Susan Walsh
Climate change is making ocean levels rise in two ways. It’s a problem that will endure even after the world stabilizes and slashes greenhouse gas pollution.
From the high Yukon to the mountains of Central Asia, melting ice exposes fragile ancient artifacts that tell the story of the past – and provide hints about how to respond to a changing climate.
Survey respondents who overestimated the amount and speed of sea-level rise were more likely to express greater concern. But concern is not always helpful in prompting action.
The big wildcard for sea level rise is Antarctica.
James Eades/Unsplash
If emissions continue at their current pace, Antarctica will cross a threshold into runaway sea rise when today’s kids are raising families. Pulling CO2 out of the air later won’t stop the ice loss.
The Greenland Ice Sheet is the world’s second largest body of ice.
Robert Law
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.
Aerial view of a glacier in the Antarctic peninsula region.
Getty Images/Mario Tama
Two centuries after it was first sighted by Russian explorers, Antarctica is a key site for studying the future of Earth’s climate – and for global scientific cooperation.
Studies show that the Arctic is heating up twice as fast as the rest of the planet.
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
A paleooceanographer describes her ninth sea expedition, this time retrieving cylindrical ‘cores’ of the sediment and rock that’s as much as two miles down at the ocean floor.