A few photos from a walk along a section of Hadrian's Wall yesterday
Polar marine scientist. UK Science Lead in Science Coordination Office of International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration. Views are my own. On Mastodon @PoLaRobs@fediscience.org
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A few photos from a walk along a section of Hadrian's Wall yesterday
Whether we aim to reduce atmospheric CO₂ by carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) or CO₂ removal (CDR), we must store the carbon somewhere durably. This new study, led by @gidden.bsky.social, showed that global geologic carbon storage capacity is 10 times less than previous estimates. Not good.
"Talents on the Right" That's an oxymoron if ever I saw one.
As mentioned in this interview with our cruise leader, Jochen Knies, the ease with which we reached the pole was unthinkable 30 years ago when he last visited. "Reading about it is one thing - witnessing it firsthand is something entirely different" @i2b-erc.bsky.social
Other media outlets seem very concerned about tax avoidance by politicians at the moment, so surely they will splash this story over their front pages and run it as the lead story in bulletins, won't they?
Kemi Badenoch’s ‘Free Speech’ Conservatives Ban Byline Times From Party Conference The ban on covering the party’s annual gathering came despite Badenoch’s repeated commitment to “fight” for free speech and a free press bylinetimes.com/2025/09/04/k...
Very sad news www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... 😪
I had to do a double take here. At first glance the pictured vessel, the RV Ji Di, looks quite similar to the RRS Sir David Attenborough. As the Ji Di was only launched at the end of 2023, it does make me wonder to what extent the designers had studied the UK vessel.
Shocking stats from this paper on the extreme 2024 summer heat in Arctic Svalbard, which lost 1% of its total ice volume in just ~6 weeks. 🔥 In fact, Svalbard's 2024 glacier mass loss actually exceeded that of the Greenland Ice Sheet, which is 50 times larger!!! 😱 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... ❄️🧪🌊
There undoubtedly going to be many fatalities as a consequence of the impacts of anthropogenic climate change. We can already see this happening in heatwaves, wildfires, hurricanes, floods etc. that have been turbo-charged by warming. But we can still limit how bad it gets.
'Road to Prosperity'? Road to Armageddon would be more like it.
No, glacial maximum ppm was 180. During the last few interglacial periods ppm peaked at around 280. These are robust measurements on bubbles of the past atmosphere preserved in ice cores. We're in a completely different ballpark today.
My startegy to reduce typos and autocorrect errors is to post on Mastodon first, then check what I've posted and correct any errors, then copy & paste here.
RealClimate: Climate Scientists response to DOE report www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar...
I keep coming back to this New Yorker cartoon:
But on the evidence of the cost of the lease they've just agreed, it's still not as expensive as London.
Anyhow, very relevant to a couple of close family members who are about to move there.
Temperature anomalies averaged over the last month (left), 3 months (center), and 12 months (right) across the Northern Hemisphere... Data from @copernicusecmwf.bsky.social ERA5 reanalysis.
The link you posted didn't work for me, but scrolling down through the European Corresponent link from another of your posts I found the map I think this one refers to.
Similarly, we can't stop committed sea-level rise by geoengineering. Even if you could somehow secure funding equivalent to the GDP of a medium-sized country to try to reduce ice losses from a couple of large Antarctic glaciers, sea-level contributions from other sources would continue unabated.
It's very simple. The people costing all the money, are the people with all the money. Not the people with hardly any money. It really shouldn't need explaining.
Wonder how the fact that most documents are read (or skimmed) as pdfs on a screen these days has impacted sales of staplers and staples?
Prof Drijfhout quote: "We can’t geo-engineer this. We can only lower the chances that it happens by limiting the warming as fast as possible, implying speeding up the decrease in carbon dioxide emissions to net zero." 👏
Very pleased to see that you included a quote from Prof Drijfhout pointing out that there is no feasible geoengineering solution to this. It's important for that sort of technofantasy nonsense to be stopped in It's tracks before it distracts from essential mitigation and adaptation.
✍️ Atlantic circulation collapse could come sooner than expected Brian McHugh interviews Professor Sybren Drijfhout, lead author of the new report, who explains why cutting carbon dioxide emissions to net zero is becoming even more urgent to prevent climate disaster @brianmchugh.bsky.social
“sometimes you have to just look out and see what’s within your reach. And this problem is within our reach, so we just see it as sort of doing our part.” www.theguardian.com/environment/...
We’re filling the atmosphere with CO2 like a bathtub with water. Most of it stays for millennia. That is why the cumulative emissions (the total amount, as pictured here) and not yearly emissions determine the amount of #globalwarming.
“The ECHR isn’t Brussels meddling. It’s the foundation that protects you from your own government.” – The Bear on why leaving the ECHR would be a really Bad Idea.
"At present, studies supporting recent shrinkage or growth depend on limited measurements that are subject to high temporal and regional variability, and it is too early to say how the Antarctic ice sheet will behave in a warmer world." 4/4
As an indication of the state of scientific knowledge about this in the early 1990s, in 1992 Stan Jacobs wrote in Nature: 3/4
Firstly, net ice loss from Antarctica prior to the 1990s was relatively small, and secondly most of the loss was, and still is, from a sector of Antarctica few people had ever visited - the Amundsen Sea Embayment. 2/3
We didn't really know Antarctica had stated losing ice until the late 1990s, by which time there were about 5 years of satellite altimetry data showing this. It wasn't obvious before this for a couple of reasons. 1/n
Most doctors, most of the time, draw on their years (decades, in my case) of medical training & expertise to do the best we can for you. What distinguishes us from snake oil salesmen - persuasive grifters who prey on human fears to line their pockets - is our expertise & our integrity. Trust… 1/n
Friends of the Cam pleased to announce publication of a book on Feminist Climate Policy by FotC co-founder Susan Buckingham. Contains interviews with feminist climate leaders - we need these more than ever. @wen-uk.bsky.social @nataliegreenpeer.bsky.social @greenjennyjones.bsky.social
Oops, just noticed that the above post was sabotaged by autocorrect. I meant to write " Almost all in situ melting of WAIS occurs where it comes into contact with relatively warm water that comes from the deep ocean."
I was shocked when I first saw these results from standard climate models used in IPCC reports: for high emissions, the Atlantic overturning circulation #AMOC shuts down in all 9 models that ran past 2100, and is well on the way to shutdown by 2100. Our paper on that is out today.🧵
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
I saw today the dramatic effects of global heating up close. This is the Bonhus glacier in SW Norway, the photo on the left is from 1890. Like all glaciers in Norway it is shrinking rapidly.
I'm sure everyone involved in the industry is aware of that, but hey, there's money to be made as long as they can keep extracting and selling them.
A gigatonne a week makes our climate future bleak.
If he thinks action to reduce emissions is costly someone should tell him about the costs of inaction.
If anyone seems to be getting too excited about the latest plateau/uptick it would be worth pointing out that the last part of the record would look similar if you truncated it at 2010 or 2017. The underlying drivers of change remain the same.
I don't think anyone should take too much comfort from the Plateau or uptick over the past couple of years of the GRACE record. Surface accumulation is highly variable from year to year and we just had a couple of exceptional ones. Ice discharge from the WAIS is continuing to increase.
I'd love to see annual updates as well, but I appreciate that the careful job IMBIE does of reconciling information from different methods takes time.
It would, but I think "consider" or "conclude" would be still better.
Thanks. However, in view of the fact this result from GRACE data doesn't seem to have been published in a peer reviewed paper yet I think it needs to be viewed with caution. GRACE analysis is tricky because it involves large corrections for glacial isolation adjustment.
What is the source for the graph you posted here, in particular for the Velicogna et al. line? I'm looking at her Google Scholar profile and the only GRACE/GRACE-FO related outputs I see listed over recent years are meeting abstracts.
In volume terms, surface melting makes a very small contribution to ice loss from WAIS. Warming of the surface ocean is certainly a factor affecting sea ice, but the controls on Antarctic sea ice extent and thickness are complex and still not fully understood.
There seems to be some confusion between the ice sheet and sea ice in your last few posts above. Almost all in situation melted of WAIS occurs where it comes into contact with relatively warm water that comes from the deep ocean. Thr other main route of ice loss is through calving of icebergs.
At this point, it's difficult to see any way the ice loss from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet might stop. It presently accounts for about 8% of the rate of global sea-level rise, which is several times the contribution it was making in the early 1990s.
The gravity field changes measured by the GRACE satellites are just one of the types of satellite remote sensing data that show the overall increasing rate of ice loss from Antarctica over the past 30 years. There are also radar and laser altimetry data and input- output assessments.
The are markers showing the 1953 flood level at various points along the east coast. Here's one I saw recently in a cafe in Sea Palling. Peak water levels during the 2013 storm surges were actually higher but costal defences built after 1953 prevented it becoming a disaster.
And also potentially sabotaging reservoirs built in areas vulnerable to coastal flooding, but Anglian Water seem to be pushing ahead with plans to build one anyway.
The rise over the past century was about 20 cm, and many of the world's largest costal cities have invested huge amounts in flood defences to protect themselves from this.
rise in sea level can greatly reduce the recurrence interval between water levels exceeding a critical level. In many areas it takes a surprisingly small amount of sea level rise to turn the once a century event into one that happens once a decade.
Also bear in mind that flooding can become a serious problem in coastal areas long before mean sea level rises above them. Coastal flooding events start occurring when storm surges coincide with spring tides, and ..
Mein Deutsch ist auch sehr schlecht. Constraining the time over which the marine based parts of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet will be lost still requires a lot more research, because there are key processes that are still not well enough understood. It won't all happen in the next 30 years though.
The Climatecentral flood risk tools need to be used with caution. In many areas they don't take account of existing flood defences and drainage management, and certainly can't allow for how future infrastructure investments will change the picture.
Any melt rate calculation based on a simple function or parameterisation of climate sensitivity will almost certainly be wrong, because this would ignore the complexity of the Earth system and the physics of the processes involved.
Deep water warming is a secondary issue to where the already relatively warm water goes. The main concern regarding changes in the deep part of the Southern Ocean is the decline in bottom water production.
The important questions are how global climate change controls the amount of deep water incursion onto parts of the Antarctic continental shelf, and how efficiently it melts continental ice in the places they come into contact.
Actually no, because heat conduction through the water column is very slow and the upwelling deep water is very old. It has not mixed with other water masses for more than a thousand years, as shown by the apparent radiocarbon ages of organisms living in it. 1/2
Good article explaining Antarctic change, except loss of the marine-based West Antarctic Ice Sheet probably doesn't depend on whether or not global average temperatures rise to 2°C above pre-industrial. Recent results from study of it point to its loss already being committed.
Global average temperature and Southern Ocean surface temperature are not the same thing. The latter affects sea ice extent but would have to increase a lot more to have a direct effect on Antarctic Ice Sheets. It's upwelling deep water that does the damage.
There's another one I advised @icebird.bsky.social on that I included in commentary published in Geophysical Research Letters a couple of years ago. doi.org/10.1029/2021...
Initially these are figures that will be part of an infographic on the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration website (thwaitesglacier.org) explaining some of the methods used to study the glacier. They might subsequently appear in what we're referring to as an "accomplishments" paper.
A word on immigration. Don't prejudge this, just listen to the data, and then consider what the solution is. The UK has a falling birth rate. This means that - unless things change - each generation will be 25% smaller than the one before.
Not necessarily. It depends on how high you can afford to build the dykes defending it. There are certainly difficult adaptation decisions to be made though. Ultimately this will probably mean abandoning some cities. Howver, Netherlands is further ahead in thinking about this than most countries.
Yes, but don't get me started on the things that are wrong in that graphic. I spent a lot of time iterating with a graphic artist recently to eliminate a number of misconceptions and gross distortions in similar schematic figures.
Wrong questions. Timeline estimates depend more on better understanding of the processes that control ice loss from marine-based glaciers than on atmospheric warming projections. The latter depend on future emissions pathways anyhow.
Further rapid climate warming is not inevitable, but a lot of further sea-level rise is already committed because polar ice sheets will take a long time to equilibrium with the changed climate.
Indeed climate has always been changing, but usually at a much slower pace than we have been driving it over the past century. The main natural changes over the last million years have been driven by the 100,000 year cycle in eccentricity of the Earth's orbit.
Not necessarily, but there are difficult adaptation decisions to be made about where to hold the line and how much to invest in holding it there.
"Believe" should never feature in a sentence about science.
I'd prefer the sentence I quoted in the post above to have been phrased "latest scientific results point to loss of marine-based areas of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet now being inevitable, implying a commitment to more than 3 metres of global mean sea-level rise", but you get the picture.
🧪🌊🧵"experts believe a global rise in sea level of at least three metres may now be inevitable as a result of the break-up of Antarctica’s giant western glaciers" observer.co.uk/news/interna...
As far as I am aware no such commitment has been made. Regardless of whether this is where money from increased bills goes, those of us paying should expect to see clear evidence of new investments rather than greater benefits to directors and shareholders. 6/6
Surely, before proceeding with such an investment a cast iron guarantee needs to be sought from government that they will commit to investing whatever proves necessary in terms of coastal defences to make sure the reservoir doesn't end up sitting in the middle of a brackish estuary? 5/n
I'm not sure whether or not some of the increased charges are intended to go towards the cost of building the new "fen reservoir" near Chatteris. However, I do question the wisdom of investing in building a new reservoir at sea level in a region particularly threatened by sea-level rise. 4/n
I get that water resources are strained in this region, the driest in the country, and investment is needed to meet the additional strain the will be imposed by government targets for supercharged development. If this is a national priority though, should existing local residents pay for it? 3/n
The cover letter on the bill offers the explanation for the increases as "investing in improvements to our service and support, as well as protecting the environment". I thought those were things that OFWAT was supposed to ensure they were doing with money from a proportion of previous bills? 2/n
Just looked closely at my latest bill from Cambridge Water. Water volume charge per m³ and standing charge for supply have both increased ~25%. Standing charge for dealing with used and surface water is up 13% and volume tariff is up 9% (these charges passed on from Anglian Water). 1/n
An excellent article in the NYTimes about the impending demise of the last U.S. Antarctic research vessel, the N.B. Palmer, featuring US and overseas colleagues (including @polarrobs.bsky.social). Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/22/c...
Which catalog is this information from? For earthquakes of that era there must be quite a large uncertainty in epicentre locations. My guess is that these ones were probably along the Shackleton Fracture Zone between the Scotia and Antarctic plates.
Fortunately, the pure strike-slip fault motion in an area of flat sea floor with thin sediment cover means there was no significant tsunami risk.
Some intraplate earthquakes have been recorded before in this part of the SE Pacific west of the Shackleton Fracture Zone (SFZ), but this is by far the largest. Stesses accumulate in the corner of the Antarctic plate where it occurred due to oblique Scotia-Antarctic plate convergence along the SFZ.
I know what you mean. When I check on any recent measurement, such as SST or sea ice extent, part of me hopes to see extreme values that we can raise alarm about while another part hopes for some respite from the system going off the rails.
Personally, I find it terrifying when I listen to people in a different field talk objectively and dispassionately about their observations.
I think many scientists working on different aspects of the climate system are often aware of how serious things are but avoid thinking too much about it by focusing on the particular thing they are studying.
That might be a problem with several big hurdles - we won't know we've gone past them until we see them in the rear view mirror.
Probably. Scientists have a moral duty though to keep trying to communicate what's coming in every way we can.
That's part of the problem with getting people and nations to take action. It's a slow burner, but if we don't start taking it more seriously now the problems future generations will have to face will stack up even further.
It's very bad news, but it's not going to happen overnight. The situation is precarious and some significant changes are already committed, but we still have options to stop making things worse.
Perhaps partly because I put it at the end of a thread rather than as a quote post. I'll be stating the same thing a few more times over the next couple of months though.
Adam Morton - “Voices arguing that climate action is a waste of time are getting louder. Here’s why they are wrong”
It's not, but we still have plenty of potential to make things worse. Or we could choose to stop making things worse and start working out how to adapt to the changes that are already committed.
My assessment based on results I have seen recently is that regardless of whether or not you consider it constitutes a "tipping point", the point at which loss of the marine-based parts of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is committed has already been passed.
In my opinion one point made in this paper is understated. It states "The tipping point for unstoppable ice loss from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could be exceeded even under best-case CO2 emission reduction pathways"
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Excellent article explaining the situation relating to the only US Antarctic research icebreaker. Stopping research on why flow of some marine-based glaciers in Antarctica has accelerated, discharging increasing amounts of ice into the ocean, won't stop it happening. We'll just know less about it.