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Arctic

Greenland Ice Sheet Melt ‘Off the Charts’ Compared With Past Four Centuries

Surface melting across Greenland’s mile-thick ice sheet began increasing in the mid-19th century and then ramped up dramatically during the 20th and early 21st centuries, showing no signs of abating, according to new research published Dec. 5, 2018, in the journal Nature.  The study provides new evidence of the impacts of climate change on Arctic melting and global sea level rise.

“Melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet has gone into overdrive. As a result, Greenland melt is adding to sea level more than any time during the last three and a half centuries, if not thousands of years,” said Luke Trusel, a glaciologist at Rowan University’s School of Earth & Environment and former post-doctoral scholar at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and lead author of the study. “And increasing melt began around the same time as we started altering the atmosphere in the mid-1800s.”

To read the complete article at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution website, click here.

Antarctic

Record-setting scientist calls South Pole an ‘absolutely amazing place’

The idea of spending six months in the darkness of a South Pole winter may not appeal to many — it involves ice as far as the eye can see, sub-zero temperatures and no flights in or out, from February to October.

But none of that has deterred astrophysicist Robert Schwarz of the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities College of Science and Engineering. He holds a place unique in history: Over the past 22 years, he has spent 14 Southern Hemisphere winters at the pole, more than anyone who has ever lived. Though others have come close over the decades, Schwarz holds the record.

“It’s an absolutely amazing place,” he said.

Every year, roughly 50 people winter at the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, keeping the station and its many world-class experiments up and running.

To read the complete article at the National Science Foundation website, click here.