Researchers used a sediment core from a lake in California’s San Bernardino Mountains to track the effect of climate on vegetation, fire, and erosion between about 120,000 and 15,000 years ago.
glaciers & ice sheets
Seeing the Greenland Ice Sheet Through Students’ Eyes
A team of students and faculty advisers revisited the site of pioneering geosciences expeditions from the 1920s, looking to introduce young researchers to polar science.
An Ice Sheet’s Footprint on Ancient Shorelines
Researchers combine observations of ancient shorelines and properties of Earth’s crust to infer the size of the Laurentide Ice Sheet during the last glacial cycle.
Diagnosing Thwaites
The water under a vulnerable Antarctic glacier is warming. Its catastrophic collapse could trigger a dramatic increase in global sea level.
Amazon Fires Contribute to Andean Glacier Melting
New research finds that black carbon emissions produced by fires in the Amazon cause glaciers in the Andes to absorb more sunlight and melt more.
Controlled Explosions Pave the Way for Thwaites Glacier Research
Scientists detonate explosives in West Texas to prepare for fieldwork in West Antarctica.
What Lies Beneath Is Important for Ice Sheets
New research reconstructing the topography of Antarctica shows that the continent has 25% less land above sea level than when ice first started to accumulate 34 million years ago.
A New Source of Sea Level Rise from Greenland: Ice Slabs
Runoff from the Greenland ice sheet’s high elevations could double by 2100, thanks to solid layers of ice hiding just beneath the surface.
Podcast: A Nuclear Legacy Buried in Ice
The radioactive remains of nuclear testing during the Cold War and from nuclear disasters like Chernobyl are still with us and can be found in some of the remotest glaciers on Earth.
Drones Capture Iceland’s Shrinking Glaciers
Photographs of Iceland’s southern glaciers show pools of water where walls of ice once stood.