Rain used to be rare in the Arctic, but as the region warms, so-called rain-on-snow events are becoming more common. The rains accelerate ice loss, trigger flooding, landslides, and avalanches, and create problems for wildlife and the Indigenous people who depend on them.
glaciers & ice sheets
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Beneath the Ice: Greenland’s Geology Revealed in New Map
Advances in remote sensing offered an opportunity to redraw Greenland’s geologic map for the first time in 15 years.
Posted inNews
Drilling into Antarctica’s Past
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet melted rapidly around 8,000 years ago. Could that event foretell the future?
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Speed of Ice Shelf Rifting Controlled by Ocean-Ice Interactions
Scientists report the fastest rate of rift extension yet observed for an Antarctic floating ice shelf and explain why it is far slower than rates expected for brittle ice deformation.
Posted inNews
El Niño May Have Kicked Off Thwaites Glacier Retreat
Antarctica’s “Doomsday Glacier” started losing mass midcentury, around the same time as its neighboring glacier.
Posted inScience Updates
Monitoring Polar Ice Change in the Twilight Zone
Landsat’s new extended data collection program is mapping Arctic and Antarctic regions year-round, even in polar twilight.
Posted inNews
How Did We Miss 20% of Greenland’s Ice Loss?
The ice loss was hidden in places existing monitoring methods can’t reach, such as hard-to-map fjords. Machine learning helped scientist revise mass loss estimates and uncover patterns in glacial retreat.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Deep Learning Tackles Deep Uncertainty
A new method based on artificial intelligence could help accelerate projections of polar ice melt and future sea level rise.
Posted inEditors' Highlights
Plants Reveal the History of Earth’s Largest Tropical Ice Cap
Rooted plants buried by advancing outlet glaciers illustrate rapid changes in the extent of Quelccaya Ice Cap in Peru during the Holocene.
Posted inNews
Frost Quakes Shake Up Finland’s Wetlands
New research shows frost quakes may happen more frequently in wetland areas and, similar to earthquakes, can cause damage to infrastructure.