glaciers
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Holy crap, iceberg tsunami!
If you’ve ever wondered what it looks like to almost get flattened by a collapsing glacier, now you can find out. This boat was right in the line of fire — er, ice — so this video is the next best thing to being there. Actually, it’s the first best thing, because being there looks like […]
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Watch the formation of an iceberg twice the size of Manhattan
These images from NASA’s Earth Observatory show Greenland’s Petermann Glacier calving an iceberg — watch the lower right quadrant of the image to see the split go from a hairline crack to a visible break. The resulting iceberg is twice as big as Manhattan.
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Old photographs found in basement help scientists unravel warming patterns
While cleaning out a basement at the National Survey and Cadastre of Denmark, researchers found a box full of glass photo plates from a 1930s expedition to Greenland. The forgotten photos showed detailed aerial and ground-level pictures of 132 Greenland glaciers — which allowed scientists to study how the glaciers changed over a much longer period […]
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Critical List: New rules for fracking’s air pollution; prehistoric microbes live
Natural gas companies have to work on sending less methane and other hazardous compounds into the air, according to new EPA rules. The House passed that new Keystone XL provision. Oregon towns on the coast are toying with the idea of becoming major coal export ports. But it’s maaaaybe not the best idea.
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Climate change could make Mt. Everest impossible to climb
If you’ve got “summit Everest” on your bucket list, better get started now. Apa Sherpa (aka “Super Sherpa”), who’s summited Mt. Everest 21 times, tells Agence France-Presse (AFP) that the trip up the mountain is getting increasingly dangerous as climate change sets in. As Himalayan glaciers melt, bare rock — slippery, treacherous, more prone to […]
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Scientists drill into ancient buried lake
Russian scientists have confirmed that they successfully drilled into Lake Vostok, a subglacial lake that has spent the last several million years isolated from Earth’s surface by a thick slab of ice. And I mean THICK — drilling down to the lake has taken 20 years of work. But the team has finally hit water, […]
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Antarctica’s about to lose a New York City-sized chunk
Normally when icebergs split off from glaciers, it’s called “calving,” but I think it would be fair to say that Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier is about to have a cow. Pine Island Glacier, which is the continent’s fastest-melting glacier and unusually well-situated to contribute to sea level rise, is getting set to shed a chunk […]
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Man arrested for stealing glaciers
The Jorge Montt Glacier, in the Patagonia region of Chile, is receding faster than any other glacier in the country. This is probably largely because of climate change, but also maybe a little bit because some dude’s been stealing it piecemeal.
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How climate change shows up in ancient, Tolkien-esque myths
The Vernagtferner glacier in the portion of the Alps falling within the borders of Austria is said to be cursed. In ancient legend, it buried the cities Onanä and Dananä, whose ruins lie beneath its implacable mass of ice to this day. Which is all a way, way cooler story than the purely factual “climate […]