Glaciers News

When a glacier melts, all it leaves in its wake is untouched ground. These craggy, lifeless rocks begin to feel sun and rain for the first time in millennia. They…

Macarena Martinic wasn’t surprised earlier this year when the Chilean government said yes to extending the life of Los Bronces, a large, centuries-old open-pit copper mine in the Andes, an…

KATHMANDU — The South Col in the Sagarmatha (Mount Everest) region faces blasts of unrelenting winds that sweep away almost everything in their path, including snow. Located nearly 8,000 meters (26,000…

SINDHUPALCHOWK — When Batuli Tamang goes to cast her vote during Nepal’s general elections, scheduled for Nov. 20, she will have only one thing in mind, she says: saving her…

It’s tough enough to study one particular species endemic to Sagarmatha, the Nepali name for Mount Everest. Imagine attempting to catalog the entire wealth of biodiversity that makes its home…

When Kristin Laidre began working on a long-term project to study polar bears in eastern Greenland, she didn’t expect to find a new subpopulation of the species — and she certainly…

A hydroelectric dam complex in southern Argentina, one of the country’s largest energy projects, is facing backlash from conservationists and Indigenous communities who are worried about its impact on the…

The crew of the M/V Arctic Sunrise, an icebreaker vessel owned by Greenpeace, were sailing through Antarctica’s Weddell Sea this month when they saw something they didn’t expect. “One of…

“Life is different now,” says Chhireng Tamang, 75. She has lived her whole life in Langtang National Park, in northeastern Nepal. The area, famous for its trekking trails through pristine…

When the first tile in a line of dominoes tips forward, it affects everything in front of it. One after another, lined-up dominoes knock into each other and topple. This…

Over the past twenty years the concept of "tipping points" has become more familiar to the public. Tipping points are critical thresholds at which small changes can lead to dramatic…

The Greenland Ice Sheet is losing mass, and there may be no way to stop it, scientists have concluded. Even if large amounts of snowfall return to the ice sheet,…

As a massive expanse of unusually warm water spreads across the northeastern Pacific Ocean for the second time in the past five years, the latest special report from the Intergovernmental…

Until recently, researchers knew of four lakes lying hidden underneath the Greenland ice sheet. Now, scientists say they’ve identified 56 more, bringing the total to 60 known subglacial lakes beneath…

In July of last year, a 5,800-square-kilometer (2,239-square-mile) block of ice broke off of the Larsen Ice Shelf in Antarctica and fell into the Southern Ocean. The newly created iceberg…

Winters in the Himalayas are getting warmer, which is increasing the risk of avalanches, two new studies suggest. The Himalayas, a massive 2,500-kilometre (1,553-mile) arc-shaped stretch of lofty mountains straddling…

Prominent government glacier researcher and four former Argentine environment secretaries charged with negligence in glacier studies that allegedly resulted in mine toxic spills.

Two hundred years from now, the planet could look very different. This week two landmark studies revealed that West Antarctica's ice sheet is in a state of seemingly inevitable collapse…

While monitoring the retreat of the Teardrop Glacier in the Canadian Arctic, scientists have found that recently unfrozen plants, some of which had been under ice since the reign of…

Glaciers in the Mount Everest region have shrunk by 13 percent and the snow-line has shifted 180 meters (590 feet) higher during the past 50 years, according to a study…

Pastoruri Glacier. Photo by: Edubucher/Wikimedia Commons. Glaciers are melting faster than ever in the tropical Andes, warns a new study published in The Cryosphere, which puts the blame for vanishing…

Top: a map of Antarctica showing the extent of surface melting in January 2005 observed from space. Bottom: Time series of mean January temperature at Byrd Station from 1957 to…

Over the course of several years, turbulent water overflow from a large melt lake carved this 60-foot deep canyon. Note the people for scale. Photo by: Ian Joughin. A massive…

University at Buffalo students crawl over remnants of an ancient glacier on Baffin Island, Canada. Photo by Jason Briner, courtesy of the University at Buffalo. Even as glaciers retreat from…

A new film, opening in the U.S. in November, follows the exploits of National Geographic photographer, James Balog, as he attempts to photograph the end of glaciers and great ice…

Snow blanketed southern Patagonia in late May 2012. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this natural-color image on May 30, when snow cover extended from…

Satellite images highlighted last week by NASA reveal the rapid disappearance of Indonesia's only glaciers. The images, captured by the Thematic Mapper (TM) on Landsat 4 and Landsat 5, show…

A supraglacial lake over the Greenland ice sheet in the Kangerlussuaq area at 1500 m elevation photographed on July 21, 2012. The lake feeds a stream that will deliver meltwater…

Field camp on Ferrigno Ice Stream. Courtesy of the University of Aberdeen British researchers have discovered a one mile deep rift valley hidden beneath the icy surface of West Antarctica,…

NASA Earth Observatory images created by Jesse Allen, using data provided by Nicolo DiGirolamo (SSAI) and Dorothy Hall (NASA/GSFC) in the NASA/GSFC Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory. 97 percent of Greenland's ice…