Climate change at the poles and around the globe
Scientists find ancient Antarctic ice melt could happen again, raising sea levels by three metres. During my first trip to Australia back in 1990, in the days when we had no mobiles and travellers had to queue up outside a telephone box, a breath of chilly air (by Australian winter standards) prompted a local next …
Continue reading A warm breeze coming up from the pole? What's going on in Antarctica?
I would love to be looking forward to the 2020s as the decade when the Arctic as we have known it will be saved; climate change decisively halted; emissions will peak; fossil fuels become true fossils; sustainable living will be the 'in' -thing. The Arctic will not become ice-free in summer after all. And Fridays …
Continue reading 2020 – Crunch time – or squelch time – for the Arctic?
Another year, another COP... What's a year in the history of a planet? And as we head for 2020 – the start of a new decade - what's ten years in the evolution of the earth? The UNFCCC tells us COP25 serves to “build ambition ahead of 2020, the year in which countries have committed …
Continue reading COP25 and the Arctic: stakes high, expectations low as tipping points tumble
The latest figures from the NSIDC do not make happy reading. The Arctic sea ice extent averaged for October 2019 was 5.66 million square kilometers (2.19 million square miles), the lowest in the 41-year continuous satellite record. The experts tell us this was 230,000 square kilometers (88,800 square miles) below that observed in 2012—the previous …
Continue reading Arctic sea ice record low. Can we communicate our way out of climate paralysis?
Recently, the picture editor of the Guardian, Fiona Shields, published a piece explaining "why we are going to be using fewer polar bears and more people to illustrate our coverage of the climate emergency". She writes: "At the Guardian we want to ensure that the images we publish accurately and appropriately convey the climate crisis …
Continue reading Polar bear pictures and the climate emergency
When the latest IPCC report on climate change and the ocean and cryosphere was published last month, I wrote this commentary for Deutsche Welle. It is so directly related to the Ice Blog brief that it seems right to publish it again here. I am especially encouraged by the reactions of some of my young …
Continue reading Warming Arctic, warming world: the chilling truth
Since my first experiences of hiking in the Alps in the 1970s, I have had a fascination for ice, snow and sky. Later, as an environment journalist with Deutsche Welle, I had my first opportunity to visit the Arctic in 2007. It was the start of the international polar year and Moira Rankine of Soundprint …
