Melting Glaciers: Andes, Altai, Alps and China May Be Completely Ice-Free
Isotopic analysis of rocks near the Andes glaciers has shown that these glaciers have become smaller than at any time in the Holocene, which indicates significant warming in the tropics. Scientists have recorded a violent bloom of blood-red algae Chlamydomonas nivalis on glaciers in the Altai Mountains this year, which leads to their more active melting and may be an indicator of climate change. Small glaciers in northwest China will disappear by the middle of the 21st century. The China Daily newspaper, citing local scientists, reports that the disappearance of glaciers is inevitable, and this should be expected “regardless of the climate scenario and the amount of precipitation.”
Melting polar ice caused by climate change is redistributing the Earth’s mass and increasing the length of the day
Researchers used more than 120 years of data to understand how melting ice, depleting groundwater and rising sea levels are shifting the planet’s rotation axis and lengthening the days.
Features of the landscape on Mars – new discoveries
Olympus Mons is one of a dozen large volcanoes, many of which are ten to a hundred times taller than their Earthly counterparts. If Martian space tourism takes off in the coming decades, Olympus Mons could become a prime destination for adventure enthusiasts. Olympus may once have been a volcanic island surrounded by an ocean nearly 4 miles (6 km) deep, according to geological evidence found in the high cliffs. Another new study found that the rover discovered polygonal wedges 35 kilometers underground – the first time they have been discovered beneath the planet’s surface. Evidence suggests that the wedges formed between 3.7 and 2.9 billion years ago due to major climate changes in Mars’ past. The Mars Express orbiter has discovered enough water ice buried beneath the Red Planet’s equator to cover the entire planet in a shallow ocean if it melted.
Alaska’s Columbia Glacier is one of the fastest-changing glaciers in the world
ESA’s (European Space Agency) Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission explored Alaska’s Columbia Glacier, one of the fastest-changing glaciers in the world. The Columbia Glacier is a tidal glacier flowing down the snow-covered slopes of the Chugach Mountains. The mountains contain the largest concentration of glacial ice in Alaska. Since the early 1980s, the Columbia Glacier has retreated more than 20 km and lost about half of its total volume. This glacier accounts for nearly half of the ice lost in the Chugach Mountains.
Antarctica: Humanity still has time to prepare for rapidly rising sea levels
Antarctica’s glaciers are melting at a catastrophic rate, but humanity still has time to prepare for rapidly rising sea levels. An international team of oceanologists has discovered that quite strong and warm currents move through large cracks in the bases of Antarctic sea glaciers, which accelerate the process of melting of these ice masses, preventing the continental glaciers of Antarctica from quickly “sliding” into the sea. The retreat of Antarctic glaciers due to rising summer temperatures has led to the melting of ancient mosses. Fossil mosses, buried under ice for several thousand years, became accessible to microorganisms and became a source of the greenhouse gas methane.
The Earth’s South Pole is melting and cracking, and many new faults have opened in recent years
The Glenzer-Conger Glacier collapsed in East Antarctica, an area long considered stable and not greatly affected by climate change.
The Greenland ice sheet preserves the impact crater of a two-kilometer asteroid and ancient vegetation
The Greenland Ice Sheet is the second largest on Earth after the Antarctic Ice Sheet and covers 1.5 million square meters, with ice depths reaching 3,000 meters