The Earth’s Crust Doesn’t Stop – Scientists Discover Old and New Continents
Scientists have discovered an unexpected new continent hiding beneath Greenland. Zealandia, thought to be a candidate for Earth’s eighth continent, has been almost completely submerged by the sea. The new ocean could split Africa into two continents. Doggerland: Before it was inundated by a tsunami 8,000 years ago, this landmass connected Britain and continental Europe. Archaeologists and citizen scientists have discovered a number of artifacts from Doggerland over the years, including a deer bone with an arrowhead and a fragment of a human skull.
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.
The Arctic could become ice-free in the 2030s, Antarctica and Greenland are melting at record rates
The Arctic will be ice-free within a decade during the summer months. A new study from the University of Colorado Boulder says the Arctic could become ice-free in August or September as early as the 2020s or 2030s. The Arctic could then remain ice-free for nine months of the year, as predicted by worst-case climate scenarios. This is largely due to the fact that sea ice, which reflects solar radiation, melts into the open ocean, which absorbs solar radiation.
Melting permafrost could release nuclear waste and pathogens
A team of scientists has discovered that thawing permafrost could release a dangerous legacy of the Cold War – nuclear waste that is still radioactive. In addition, the release of pathogenic microorganisms is possible, reports Nature Climate Change. Melting Arctic glaciers could release radioactive waste from Cold War-era nuclear submarines and reactors. The Arctic’s nine million square miles of ice have been accumulating for more than a million years a variety of substances that could be released into the air and water due to climate change.
The Arctic, Antarctica and Greenland have received special attention from organizations involved in space research
The Russian satellite constellation Arktika-M, launched in 2021 and 2023, transmitted the first images of the Arctic region and surrounding areas from space. On June 30, 2011, NASA’s Terra satellite made several passes over the Arctic. ICESat-2 is the second spacecraft to study the Earth’s ice cover. The US-India satellite NISAR will begin monitoring changes in the Earth’s frozen regions in 2024.
Glaciers in northern Greenland have shrunk by more than a third in volume, and Greenland was ice-free a million years ago
Even if the world stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, the ice sheet would lose more than 110 trillion tons of ice, causing global sea levels to rise by nearly 30 cm. Greenland currently contains enough ice to raise sea levels by about 7 meters. Complete melting of the ice sheet will not happen in our lifetime, but the potential consequences for future generations will be catastrophic.
Global warming is accelerating itself
On the Pacific islands, entire cities are retreating inland under the pressure of water. Melting permafrost is changing landscapes, destroying animal habitats, releasing carbon and releasing dangerous microorganisms that have been trapped in the ice for millennia.
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