News by Subject Atmospheric Science

New research on how glaciers in the European Alps will fare under a warming climate has come up with concerning results. Under a limited warming scenario, glaciers would lose about two-thirds of their present-day ice volume, while under strong warming, the Alps would be mostly ice free by 2100. The results, now published in the European Geosciences Union (EGU) journal The Cryosphere, are presented today (9 April) at the EGU General Assembly 2019 in Vienna, Austria.

In the 1960s animated sitcom 'The Jetsons,' George Jetson commutes to work in his family-size flying car, which miraculously transforms into a briefcase at the end of the trip.

It takes at least 10 million years for life to fully recover after a mass extinction, a speed limit for the recovery of species diversity that is well known among scientists. Explanations for this apparent rule have usually invoked environmental factors, but research led by the University of Texas at Austin links the lag to something different: evolution.

A million years ago, a longtime pattern of alternating glaciations and warm periods dramatically changed, when ice ages suddenly became longer and more intense. Scientists have long suspected that this was connected to the slowdown of a key Atlantic Ocean current system that today once again is slowing. A new study of sediments from the Atlantic bottom directly links this slowdown with a massive buildup of carbon dragged from the air into the abyss.

Climate change is increasing the likelihood of extreme winter rain events in the Arctic. These kinds of winter storms on Norway's Svalbard archipelago can cause a thick cap of ice to cover the forage that reindeer eat. You'd think that more frequent rain-on-snow events would spell the end for these arctic animals -- but you'd be wrong.