tagged w/ Glacier
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Arctic sea ice melted to its second-lowest level this summer, rising slightly from 2007's record but still showing a downward trend that is a key symptom of climate change, U.S. scientists said on Tuesday.
The ice slipped to its minimum extent for 2008 on September 12, when it covered 1.74 million square miles (4.52 million square km), and now appears to be growing as the Arctic starts its seasonal cooldown, the National Snow and Ice Data Center said.
This is 33 percent below the average summer ice cover in the Arctic since satellites began measuring it in 1979 and is less than 10 percent above last year's all-time record low, said Walt Meier, a research scientist at the ice center.
"We're not as low as we were last year, which was the real mind-blowing record, but we're well below anything else we've had in the past," Meier said in a telephone interview from Boulder, Colorado.
One channel of the Northwest Passage -- a long-sought water route between Europe and Asia -- was open in both 2007 and 2008. This year also saw the opening of the Northern Sea Route, which runs through the Arctic Ocean along the Siberian coast.
The ice center said last month that there was substantial ice melt in the Chukchi Sea off the Alaskan coast in the Eastern Siberian Seas off Russia's east coast, home to one of the world's largest polar bear populations.
Because polar bears use sea ice floes as platforms for hunting seals, they are forced to swim longer distances when the ice melts, making them more likely to tire and drown.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Arctic sea ice melted to its second-lowest level this summer,... more
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Scientific data and satellite images have shown that yet another glacier is vanishing. Recent findings by the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University say that Petermann Glacier, in northern Greenland, recently lost an11-square-mile (29-square-kilometer) chunk, between July 10 and July 25.
According to scientists, Petermann Glacier, the Northern Hemisphere's longest-floating glacier, will continue to crack, shift, diminish and break off, until it's scientifically-predicted demise - circa 2009!!!Scientific data and satellite images have shown that yet another glacier is vanishing.... more
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Having photographed Briksdalsbreen glacier each year we did research there it is now possible to see each year's retreat:
Nov. 2006
This photo shows that the ice has melted back to the bedrock and has lost around 100m in one year. Having photographed Briksdalsbreen glacier each year we did research there it is now... more
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The Smithsonian Institution in Washington says it has discovered what could be massive amounts of ice just below the surface of Mars. The Smithsonian Institution in Washington says it has discovered what could be massive... more
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... World champion big wave surfers, Garrett McNamara and Kealii Mamala rode into surfing history when they towed into a wave generated by Child's Glacier in South-Central Alaska.... World champion big wave surfers, Garrett McNamara and Kealii Mamala rode into... more
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Freaking amazing.
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Kazaam
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added this
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4 years ago
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