Search the archive.

The first barrier to GPS being reliably available in the Arctic is due to the orbital inclination of the satellites involved. The satellites follow one of six orbital planes, all at an inclination of roughly 55 degrees, though some other satellite navigation systems, specifically Galileo and Glonass, have higher inclinations of 56 and 64.8 degrees, respectively. The Arctic circle, meanwhile, begins at about 66.5 degrees north. At these high latitudes, several satellites are still visible at any given time, but they never pass directly overhead. In fact, when using GPS right at the pole, the highest elevation GPS satellite you would see is about 45 degrees above the horizon.

As a result, according to Anna B.O. Jensen and Jean-Paul Sicard in their article "Challenges for Positioning and Navigation in the Arctic", this situation leads to "better horizontal satellite geometry, but worse vertical satellite geometry compared to the situation at mid and low latitudes."

Rapid warming in the Arctic has opened up faster shipping channels through the fabled Northwest Passage in recent decades, but a study reveals that the reduction in ice is likely to lead to increased levels of fog, potentially removing the benefits of these high-latitude short cuts.

As sea ice melts, more of the underlying warmer water comes into contact with cold air, increasing the chances of water vapour condensing into fog.

Arctic sea ice is rapidly vanishing as the world warms, opening up potential new shipping routes across the top of the world. But there’s a catch: Less ice means more fog, making it harder and more dangerous for ships to navigate the thawing sea.

It’s an overlooked climate trade-off, according to a new study. And while new Arctic passages often are touted as faster alternatives to conventional shipping routes through the Panama and Suez canals, foggy conditions can cause delays.

Despite warming temperatures worldwide, scientists are exploring Earth’s ancient cold snaps. Researching how past ice ages ended can reveal clues about our planet’s future.

Some of the evidence suggests that we might be overdue for an ice age, in fact, according to glaciologist Brenda Hall of the University of Maine.

The arrival of intense cold similar to the one raged during the "Little Ice Age", which froze the world during the XVII century and in the beginning of the XVIII century, is expected in the years 2030--2040. These conclusions were presented by Prof. V.Zharkova (Northumbria University) during the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno in Wales by the international group of scientists, which also includes Dr Helen Popova of the Skobeltsyn Institute of Nuclear Physics and of the Faculty of Physics of the Lomonosov Moscow State University, professor Simon Shepherd of Bradford University (UK) and Dr Sergei Zharkov of Hull University (UK).

It is known, that the Sun has its own magnetic field, the amplitude and spatial configuration of which vary with time. The formation and decay of strong magnetic fields in the solar atmosphere results in the changes of electromagnetic radiation from the Sun, of the intensity of plasma flows coming from the Sun, and the number of sunspots on the Sun's surface. The study of changes in the number of sunspots on the Sun's surface has a cyclic structure vary in every 11 years that is also imposed on the Earth environment as the analysis of carbon-14, beryllium-10 and other isotopes in glaciers and in the trees showed.

In this editorial I will demonstrate with newly discovered solar activity proxy-magnetic field that the Sun has entered into the modern Grand Solar Minimum (2020–2053) that will lead to a significant reduction of solar magnetic field and activity like during Maunder minimum leading to noticeable reduction of terrestrial temperature.

Sun is the main source of energy for all planets of the solar system. This energy is delivered to Earth in a form of solar radiation in different wavelengths, called total solar irradiance. Variations of solar irradiance lead to heating of upper planetary atmosphere and complex processes of solar energy transport toward a planetary surface.

But could it be that the greenhouse gasses being pumped into the atmosphere, that many believe are responsible for a recent warming of the planet, might counteract the forces bringing us a new glaciation? Could it be that greenhouse gasses might actually stave off the return of the ice and save the lives of tens of millions, if not civilisation itself? A recent study by scientists at Cambridge University and published in the Journal Nature Geoscience suggests that the carbon dioxide might extend the current interglacial until carbon dioxide levels fall. They believe that the atmospheric concentration of CO2 must be about 240 parts per million before glaciation could start.

"One day you'll wake up - or you won't wake up, rather - buried beneath nine stories of snow. It's all part of a dependable, predictable cycle, a natural cycle that returns like clockwork every 11,500 years. And since the last ice age ended almost exactly 11,500 years ago…" (Ice Age Now)

In something like a Day after Tomorrow scenario, the idea that a new ice-age was just around the corner was the subject of a book, a DVD and a website created in 2002. The author was a retired architect, by the way. Fortunately for us, both the movie and the quote above are figments of someone's fertile imagination. But let's have a quick look at ice-ages and what makes them tick, after which we hope you will agree that the notion that another ice-age is just around the corner is nonsensical.

Global warming is likely to disrupt a natural cycle of ice ages and contribute to delaying the onset of the next big freeze until about 100,000 years from now, scientists said on Wednesday.

In the past million years, the world has had about 10 ice ages before swinging back to warmer conditions like the present. In the last ice age that ended 12,000 years ago, ice sheets blanketed what is now Canada, northern Europe and Siberia.

What do these findings indicate about the variation in the risk of conflict and civil conflict? Firstly, all four models support the argument that a significant relationship exists between food insecurity and conflict. More specifically, these findings suggest that, for an average country, the baseline risk of conflict and civil conflict increases in regions that provide at least some access to food – supporting the expectation that global demands for food should generally direct conflict towards agricultural areas. At the same time, within agricultural areas, conflict is intuitively more likely to arise in regions where the levels of food per capita are low – that is, where food supplies are scarce. Secondly, and in line with previous research (Burke et al. 2009; O’Loughlin et al. 2012; Hsiang and Meng 2014; Hendrix and Salehyan 2012), warmer regions and areas with lower precipitation were significantly more likely to experience conflict. This supports the argument that food scarcity can serve, to some extent, as a mediating factor for the effects of climate variables, in addition to the independent impact of food insecurity related concerns on conflict. Thirdly, as extant studies (e.g., Hegre and Sambanis 2006) suggest, poorer regions are more likely to experience conflict, as are more ethnically diverse regions, although it appears that higher levels of democracy do not translate into more peace once cell level characteristics are taken into account.3 Perhaps unsurprisingly, regions with larger populations are more likely to experience conflict, as are more rural regions, as some scholars have argued (Fearon and Laitin 2003; Kalyvas 2006; Buhaug et al. 2009).

In sum, four models involving different explanatory variables have been utilized to examine two conceptualizations of conflict as an outcome of interest. The results strongly support extant arguments that access to and availability of food are each associated with an increased occurrence of armed conflict. This evidence does not negate previous explanations of conflict that emphasize the importance of political and economic development or climactic variation. However, by highlighting the strong association between food access and availability on one hand, and local political violence on the other, the above findings do show that these past expositions (e.g. Miguel et al. 2004; Burke et al. 2009; Hsiang and Meng 2014) in and of themselves are insufficient to fully explain the likelihood of local level conflict. Simply put, the present study confirms that there exists a systematic, and global, relationship between food insecurity on one hand, and the occurrence and persistence of social conflict on the other.

Earth has gone through at least five major ice ages in its history. And you better start adapting now. Because another ice age is about to begin. Hypothetically. How would a new ice age change Earth as we know it? What could you do to survive on a frozen planet? And how are we already delaying another ice age?

During all ice ages in Earth’s history, global temperatures dropped well below freezing across the planet. And it wasn’t just a few icy trips around the Sun. Earth can take hundreds of millions of years to thaw out. The most recent ice age started the Quartenary period about 2.6 million years ago. And technically, we’re still in it today.

While there have been many extreme climate changes since Earth was formed, our species has survived the changes for only a fraction of that total time. During the past 200,000 years, homo sapiens have survived two ice ages. While this fact shows humans have withstood extreme temperature changes in the past, humans have never seen anything like what is occurring now. As stated above, humans have only survived ice ages which means there is no accurate reference to compare with global warming. The true effects of modern day climate change is relatively unknown. Many people believe animals and plants can adapt to modern day climate change because they did so during the Ice Age. However, adaptation is not possible since these changes are happening too quick. Since adaptation is a slow process, animals and plants are at a risk because the rate of modern day climate change is too fast. It is predicted that climate change will be responsible for the extinction of 35% of animal and plant species by 2050. Change in climate would have detrimental effects on today's massive population, especially because food sources will dwindle rapidly. Just because humans have survived past extreme climate changes, this doesn’t imply that the changes occurring today can be withstood. Without a previous event of global warming to work off of, humans are facing a new problem and are very much at risk.

This may sound like good news – nobody wants another ice age anytime soon – but it isn’t a reason to thank fossil fuels, says lead author Dr Andrey Ganopolski from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. He tells Carbon Brief:

“We do not believe that the fact that anthropogenic CO2 emission can additionally postpone the next ice age…has any practical importance – this is rather an illustration of not so well-known fact that anthropogenic climate change will last not hundreds, but hundreds of thousand years.”

The last ice age, also known as the Pleistocene, was a time of extreme weather conditions. The average temperature was around 12 degrees Celsius colder than today, and much of the Earth was ice-covered. Despite these harsh conditions, humans survived and even thrived during this period. One reason for this is their ability to adapt. They created tools and clothing to withstand the cold and learned to hunt and gather food in icy conditions. For example, they used spears for hunting woolly mammoths and other large animals and created warm clothing from animal hides. They also built shelters from bones, rocks, and ice to protect themselves from the elements.

While humans were able to survive the last ice age, the next one could prove to be much more challenging. The world's population has grown significantly since the last ice age, and many modern technologies rely on electricity and fossil fuels. In an ice age, these resources would be scarce, making it difficult to maintain our current way of life. However, advancements in technology and infrastructure may help us adapt to extreme conditions. For example, we could develop sustainable energy sources that can be used in cold environments. We could also build more resilient infrastructure to withstand extreme weather conditions, such as stronger buildings and roads.’

When the scientists compared the volcanic record with glacial coverage, they found the number of eruptions indeed dropped significantly as the climate cooled and ice expanded. “There’s a big change in the record in the mid-Holocene [epoch], where we see no volcanic ash in Europe and very little in Iceland,” says Swindles, an associate professor of Earth system dynamics at the University of Leeds. “This seems to overlap with a time where there’s cold climate conditions, which would have favored glacial advance in Iceland.” He says his team observed an approximately 600-year lag between when glaciers advanced and volcanic activity diminished. “That’s because it takes a long time to grow ice masses,” he explains.

The new study is “looking at maybe the smallest-magnitude climate change yet to show it has influence on volcanic activity,” says Ben Edwards, an associate professor of geology at Dickinson College. “To see this change in an interglacial period indicates that there’s an even more subtle relationship between climate change and volcanism” than scientists previously thought. Julie Schindlbeck, a volcanologist at Heidelberg University in Germany, says the work shows “maybe even small changes in ice volume can really affect volcanism.”

Earth's poles are moving — and that's normal. But new research suggests that within just decades, climate change and human water use have given the poles' wandering an additional nudge.

Any object's spin is affected by how its weight is distributed. Earth's weight distribution is always changing, it turns out, as the planet's molten innards roil and its surface morphs. Water is a key influencer, since it's so heavy. In the past two decades, two supersensitive NASA satellite missions — the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) and its successor — have analyzed this shifting weight, but those observations began only in 2002.

The thought of another Ice Age may seem far-fetched to many people. After all, we live in a world that's getting warmer every year, with record-breaking temperatures becoming more and more common. But the truth is that an Ice Age isn't as far away as we might think. In fact, there are several things that could cause another Ice Age to occur, and they might be closer than we realize.

The last Ice Age ended around 10,000 years ago, and it was caused by changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun. However, there are several other factors that could trigger another Ice Age, including changes in the sun's activity, volcanic eruptions, and even human activity.

Potential causes of the Little Ice Age have been noted from several key events, possibly working in conjunction with one another or coinciding. One notable explanation is that these anomalies were initially caused by an increase in volcanoes, hence reducing solar activity for the planet. In 1315, Mount Tarawera in what is now New Zealand erupted, but prior to that, another large volcano occurred in 1257, with three smaller ones following within the next 100 years. What proved unique about this succession of volcanoes is that these were known as “stratovolcanoes,” a condition where magma leaves and forms various layers within different eruptions, causing unusually high levels of ash and toxic gases, hence contributing to longer-lingering and changing temperatures (Lorrey et al., 2014).

Additionally, NASA surveillance systems have detected 16 major eruptions followed by cooling events from the beginning of the 1600s, which coincides with the Jamestown settlement period, causing sunspot activity due to orbital forcing and escaping greenhouse gases. Each time a volcano erupts, ash and magma form clouds within the Earth’s atmosphere, blocking out solar radiation and thus causing cooling periods. Because cloud coverage varies depending on the location and size of the eruption, different places on the planet will experience various levels of cooling. Moreover, this cooling effect can have implications for the entire planet, since major cooling within an area of the hydrosphere can affect ocean currents and ultimately lead to increased sea levels and potential coastal flooding. In addition to detrimental effects on the hydrosphere and lithosphere, any volcanic eruption, especially those following in succession, will also influence atmospheric circulation, and cyclical lows within solar radiation will also cause changes within the ocean’s circulation (Ellis et al., 2013).

Recent research quoted by Carbon Brief confirms that the impact of humans on the planet is pushing back when the Earth might descend into its next ice age.

In the article written by Robert McSweeny, Carbon Brief says “while the Earth might have naturally cycled back into an ice age in 50,000 years’ time in the absence of emissions, we’re unlikely to see one for at least 100,000 years because of the CO2 we put into the atmosphere.”

Many claim that in the 1970’s all scientists believed the earth was cooling. Factual examination of the controversial report reveals that there was a consensus. The consensus was we don’t know enough yet. The confirmation of the Milankovitch cycles indicated that we were to begin a cooling phase, the introduction of industrial greenhouse gases indicated we could interrupt the natural cycle. More study was needed.

As in all thing’s science and reason, context is required to understand relevance of any data or scope of understanding. In the case of the global cooling myth, let’s take a look at the context.