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"The Arctic is changing faster than anywhere else on the planet, so the question we’re trying to ask here is: Is the Arctic going to change fast, or really fast?" NASA's most ambitious Arctic voyage to date has revealed surprisingly high concentrations of ice particles in clouds over Greenland, a clue that may help explain why Arctic ice is melting even faster than predicted. "The Arctic is changing faster than anywhere else on the planet, so the question we're trying to ask here is: Is the Arctic going to change fast — or really fast?" Patrick Taylor, the deputy science...

In addition to the 47 volcanoes already known about currently “sleeping” under the Arctic ice, scientists have found more. They discovered 91 additional volcanoes in Antartica, now the largest volcanic region on earth. This is a big blow to those who think melting polar ice is the sole fault of humans. The project, by Edinburgh University researchers, has revealed almost 100 volcanoes. The highest discovered volcano is as tall as the Eiger, a popular peak to traverse in the Swiss Alps, which stands at almost 4,000 meters (over 13,000 ft) in Switzerland. Before this discovery, the densest concentration of volcanoes...

Despite dire predictions that the North Pole would be ice-free in the near future, Arctic Sea ice levels have been more stable than scientists predicted.  So far this winter, Arctic Sea ice levels are above where they were at the same time last winter and are well within the the standard deviation of the 1981 to 2010 variation, according to daily sea ice data.Europe’s CryoSat-2 satellite found that sea-ice volumes for the fall of 2014 were above the average extent for the last five years. Sea-ice levels were up sharply from 2011 and 2012, according to the satellite– only slightly...

UPDATE: Apparently Joe Romm can’t handle this information. Ecotretas records the action here. Readers may have seen this BBC story:BBC – Earth News – Climate change threatens slow swimming narwhals “That places them at high risk from climate change, as narwhals will not be able to cope with shifting, highly mobile ice floes caused by warmer seas.” As explained below, a narwhal fossil find suggests that the Arctic may have been more open and warmer in the past. Guest post by Ecotretas (visit his blog here)In early August, an ice island calved from Greenland’s Petermann Glacier. Later in the month,...

Since there is so much worry about the Arctic Sea Ice extent this time of year, it is always good to get some historical perspective. According to this study, our current low Arctic ice extents are not unprecedented.From a press release of the Geological Survey of Norway:Less ice in the Arctic Ocean 6000-7000 years ago Written by: Gudmund Løvø 20. October 2008 Recent mapping of a number of raised beach ridges on the north coast of Greenland suggests that the ice cover in the Arctic Ocean was greatly reduced some 6000-7000 years ago. The Arctic Ocean may have been periodically...

What would NSIDC and our media make of a photo like this if released by the NAVY today? Would we see headlines like “NORTH POLE NOW OPEN WATER”? Or maybe “Global warming melts North Pole”? Perhaps we would. sensationalism is all the rage these days. If it melts it makes headlines. Some additional captures from the newsreel below show that the ice was pretty thin then, thin enough to assign deckhands to chip it off after surfacing.

This year will see the second-biggest loss on record of Arctic sea ice -- a sign that the area of ice coverage is shrinking at a pace faster than once expected Mark Serreze, a senior scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said Tuesday that the sea-ice minimum, which will be reached later this month, won't hit last year's record because the amount of daylight is decreasing in the Arctic and a new freeze is beginning. But the minimum amount of ice at summer's end this year will be near last year's total. In 2007, the extent of...

A long succession of climate models has consistently suggested that CO2-induced global warming should be amplified in earth's polar regions and that the first signs of man's predicted impact on the world's weather should thus be manifest there. Many people have consequently accepted recently-reported high temperatures from various parts of the Arctic as evidence of the validity of contemporary climate model predictions and an indisputable sign that the dreaded climatic effects of mankind's CO2 emissions have in very fact arrived at the world's doorstep. Actual temperature data, however, tell a vastly different story. Following the recent release of Russian...