Climate and Environment
26 June 2019
During an expedition, a team of researchers from the University of Alaska at Fairbanks found that the unusually hot summer has quickly softened the upper layers of the massive underground ice blocks, which had been frozen for thousands of years.
“It’s an indication that the climate is now warmer than at any time in the last 5,000 or more years,” Vladimir E. Romanovsky, a professor of geophysics at the university, told Reuters by telephone. Their research results were published in the science journal Geophysical Research Letters.
The study was based on the data that Romanovsky and his colleagues had been analysing since their last expedition to the area in 2016. The group of researchers accessed the remote area by plane and found that the landscape had changed beyond recognition in the approximately ten years since the first time they had seen it.
Scientists are alarmed by the instability of permafrost because fast melting could release great quantities of greenhouse gases, which may accelerate global warming further.
A monument is to be erected to honour the glacier that was first lost to global warming in Iceland. The plaque will feature a note to future generations, as well.
According to the 2018 global report of the International Energy Agency, demand for air conditioning will triple by 2050, which will increase electricity consumption and carbon dioxide emissions and thereby accelerate the rate of global warming.
The situation is worse than we thought – not only in the case of coral reefs, but also in freshwater fish populations.
Scientists have studied mortality data in 27 Chinese cities with high population densities to get an accurate estimate of the effect that global warming of 2 instead of 1.5 degrees Celsius would have on the mortality rate.
Scientists at the Norwegian Polar Institute have found an unprecedented reduction in Svalbard’s population of reindeer in 2019.
An amazing interactive map produced by the BBC allows us to check temperatures projected for 2100 around the globe.
Alpinist Bryan Mestre took an astonishing photo at the end of June, showing a lake in the French Alps that was probably created due to the heat wave that swept Europe.
28,338 species on the planet are threatened with extinction according to the latest red list of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
The absolute temperature record was broken at one of Canada’s northernmost weather stations: 21 degrees Celsius was measured in Nunavut District beyond the Arctic Circle.
According to data from NASA, this year’s was the hottest ever month of June, and July is well on the way to setting the record for the hottest month ever.
