Melt ponds, snow loss, and other warming-induced changes are making the surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet far less reflective in the summer than it was even a decade ago. The darker ice surface absorbs more sunlight than it once did, accelerating warming and melting.
The summer of 2012 brought Greenland far more extensive melt than anything observed in the satellite record: in July 2012, surface melt extended over nearly the entire ice sheet. The standardized melt index was nearly double the previous record.
On a yearly basis, Arctic temperatures are strongly influenced by natural climate patterns, including the Arctic and North Atlantic Oscillations. Over the span of a decade, though, Arctic amplification of climate change is evident: no part of the Arctic was cooler than the long-term average.
The average U.S. citizen consumes around 3.5 pounds of peanut butter a year. Will global warming make climate conditions less peanut-friendly in the U.S.?
Arctic sea ice extent set a new record low at the end of the summer melt season on September 16, 2012. But extent is not the only quality of the ice that is changing. Wind and ocean circulation patterns are conspiring with a warmer climate to reduce the amount of year-round (multi-year) ice, transforming the remaining ice into a younger, thinner version of its old self.
Since the mid-1950s, easy-to-serve, portion-controlled fish sticks have regularly found their way onto U.S. dinner tables and into school lunches. The past decade, however, has given fishermen and scientists a preview of the challenges they may face in keeping fish sticks on the menu as the planet gets warmer.
In early July 2012, conditions throughout most of the contiguous 48 states ranged from abnormally dry to exceptional drought.
Although solar flares can bombard Earth’s outermost atmosphere with tremendous amounts of energy, most of that energy is reflected back into space by the Earth’s magnetic field or radiated back to space as heat by the thermosphere.
In the Arctic, an ocean is surrounded by continents, while Antarctica is continent surrounded by oceans. These differences in the arrangement of land and water contribute to differences in each polar region’s climate, oceanic and atmospheric circulation patterns, and seasonal and long-term sea ice patterns.
Christopher Landsea, of NOAA’s National Hurricane Center, works with tropical storm data and other hurricane experts to figure out how our warming world will affect hurricanes. Find out what current research tells us about hurricanes in the future.