A new study shows that the increasing melt of the polar ice sheets is causing the planet’s crust to warp, as the weight of the ice is lessened; causing an upward rebound of the bedrock in the affected regions, and horizontal movement of the landscape. Although the decrease in iceread more

Following an abnormally warm spring, the Arctic has lost a record amount of ice for the month of June,  from both sea surface ice and glaciers in Greenland. On June 12, parts of Greenland saw temperatures rise up to 40°F (22°C) above normal, but not before the sea ice extentread more

A massive hole the size of Lake Superior has opened in the ice that covers Antarctica’s Weddell Sea, a phenomenon that hasn’t been seen since the mid-1970s. This hole, called a polynya, opens up 80,000 square kilometers (31,000 square miles) of ocean in the middle of the Weddell Sea’s ice pack, hundreds of miles from shore. "This is hundreds of kilometers from the ice edge. If we didn’t have a satellite, we wouldn’t know it was there," explains professor Kent Moore, an atmospheric physicist at the University of Toronto.
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Large-scale glacial melt is one of the realities that is being addressed by researchers in regards to global warming, as these systems of ice are the chief source of water contributing to sea level rise as global temperatures increase. There is a great deal of concern over the ice sheets covering Greenland, melting due to the nature of ocean currents in the region, and the ice shelves in West Antarctica, vulnerable from melt caused by warm water from below, as well as increasingly warm air from above. In contrast, the much more massive ice sheet that covers East Antarctica has historically been considered stable, and has been recorded as gaining ice in recent years, as opposed to the losses seen by Greenland and West Antarctica.read more