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Shrinking Ice Sheet Made A Surprising Comeback
Thousands of years ago, the West Antarctic ice sheet shrank dramatically—then grew back in an unexpected way.
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Glaciers, Ice Sheets, and More: A Primer on the Different Types of Polar Ice
Plus: Why they matter for climate change.
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Ice Sheets May Melt Rapidly in Response to Distant Volcanoes
A study of ancient eruptions shows modern ice sheets could be vulnerable.
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East Antarctic Ice Sheet Should Remain Stable Even if the West Melts
A new look inside the ice sheet validates predictions that it probably won’t melt as quickly as its neighbor—good news, since East Antarctica contains enough water to raise sea levels by 200 feet.
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Antarctic Ice-Mapping Project Will Fly for the Last Time in October
With its mission complete, the Rosetta-Ice Project will give scientists an unprecedented look at the Ross Ice Shelf and how it’s changing with the climate.
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Christine McCarthy: A Cheerleader for the Physics of Ice
Christine McCarthy, a geophysicist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, scrunches blocks of ice between hunks of rock to study how ice behaves under pressure. Her work provides an important piece of the puzzle of how glaciers move, what makes them speed up, and how they are contributing to sea level rise as the climate warms.
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Meltwater Lakes Existed Under Antarctic Ice in Ancient Times
In recent years, scientists have discovered hundreds of lakes lying hidden deep beneath the Antarctic ice sheet. Now a team of researchers has found the remains of at least one sub-ice lake that existed when the ice was far more extensive, in sediments on the Antarctic continental shelf.
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Ancient Leaves Link Loss of Antarctic Ice to a CO2 Spike
Twenty-three million years ago, the Antarctic Ice Sheet began to shrink, going from an expanse larger than today’s to one about half its modern size. Ancient fossilized leaves retrieved from a lake bed in New Zealand now show for the first time that carbon dioxide levels increased dramatically over a relatively short period of time…
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A Prize-Winner Explains His Work
Nicolás Young studies glaciers and ice sheets, and how they’ve changed in the past. His work earned him the Blavatnik Award for Young Scientists last fall, which came with a $30,000 prize. You can hear him talk about his research in this new video, produced by the Blavatnik Family Foundation.
