Explore Our Planet

Ice shelves are much thicker than sea based ice like the Arctic ice shield. The thickness of modern-day ice shelves ranges from about 100 to 1000 meters. They consist of former land based ice up to thousands years old floating on the oceans now but still connected to continents.

When shelves melt they do not contribute to sea level rising. On the other hand they held back land ice and control the pouring rate. Land ice going off the continent causes rising sea level.

Most ice shelves are found in Antarctic, the biggest the Ross Ice Shelf is as big as France or in Greenland. Canadian ice shelves are attached to Ellesmere Island. (more…)

Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne announced the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.

About 20,000-25,000 polar bears live around North Pol in the Arctic and suffer from melting ice sheets. They have to swim far more to reach a summer habitat needed to find seals and places to raise their young.

Assuming no summer ice sheets in a few decades, polar bears will only survive in zoos. Latest researches find that now the bears have less children, are thinner and population shrinks. (more…)

More than 40,000 travellers are affected by heavy fog descended on the capital. BA cancelling a further 174 flights today.

The Met Office says the current radiation fog, caused by a clear skies in recent days followed by a large high pressure front and very light wind, could remain in place for a further four days. Currently Heathrow reports -1°C, 100% humidity and no wind.

An art science collaboration starts today on the Ross Ice Shelf. 99 blue spheres varying in size from ten inches to four feet across represent the stars as of 2006-12-22.

This temporary monument with about 800 feet in diameter is conducted by internationally renowned artist Lita Albuquerque of Los Angeles and funded by the National Science Foundation and US Antarctic Programme.

This ephemeral artwork will be a major extension of her commitment to develop a visual language that addresses the realities of time and space.
Pre-launch video, web site

Not far away near Mt. Erebus an international science team managed to drill through 100m of ice shelf, 900m of water and more than 1000m into the seabed. The deepest hole ever drilled in Antarctica tells the story of a dynamic Antarctic ice sheet advancing and retreating more than 50 times during the last five million years.

By Christmas at 1200m depth, the researchers will be able to review seven million years of climate and geological history. First analyses shows some evidence of collapses in shelf’s past. As known from the Larsen A + B shelfs a full collapse may happen within a few days.

The Ross Ice Shelf, big as France, performs an important function by slowing down the flow of glacial ice. If the ice sheets go away, many scientists believe that glaciers will flow more swiftly, adding their ice to the oceans, and that could cause sea level rise. nzherald.co.nz: Antarctic drilling record

Picture credit: stellaraxis.com, Mc Murdo (andrill.org)

Earlier this month german government announced, it will be assisted during its presidencies of the EU and G8 by two climate change experts, Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber and Lars Göran Josefsson the president of Swedish energy giant Vattenfall.

Schellnhuber is member of the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), co-editor of ‘Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change‘ and director of Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).

Currently german government negotiates reduction of CO2 emissions in the NAP2 the european commission changed, but accepted. The commission would accept an updated NAP2 until end of year 2006.

In recent years, scientists who work for and advise the federal government have seen their work manipulated, suppressed, distorted, while agencies have systematically limited public and policy maker access to critical scientific information. (more…)

World Meteorological Organization’s 4 pages press release No. 768 from December 14th summarizes year 2006 and counts reords.

Averaged separately for both hemispheres, 2006 surface temperatures for the northern hemisphere (0.58°C above 30-year mean of 14.6°C/58.28°F) are likely to be the fourth warmest and for the southern hemisphere (0.26°C above 30-year mean of 13.4°C/56.12°F), the seventh warmest in the instrumental record from 1861 to the present.

Since the start of the 20th century, the global average surface temperature has risen approximately 0.7°C. But this rise has not been continuous. Since 1976, the global average temperature has risen sharply, at 0.18°C per decade. In the northern and southern hemispheres, the period 1997-2006 averaged 0.53°C and 0.27°C above the 1961-1990 mean, respectively

Read about regional temperature anomalies, drought, heavy precipitation and flooding, El Niño, deadly typhoons, ozone depletion and Arctic sea-ice decline from all over the planet.

The Arctic Post reports of Global Warming in Lapland, due to higher temperatures the runway is still not frozen and Santa Claus may cancel an expected to be dangerous lift-off…

green-santa-com is a carbon-free non-profit website

As an impressive part the forest gallery presents photos of the biggest 18 forests on Earth from leading photograpers.

Moreover the documentation explains the importance of forests and trees for humans and biodiversity.

Take some time, enjoy the ambient background music and explore worlds most important plants and their habitat.

via: Ehrensenf.de

Since yesterday the OnEarth server of Jet Propulsion Laboratory is not working and the Daily Aqua and Terra satellite photos are not available. Hopefully all technical problems get solved and the archive will be online soon.

However latest level 2 images are still published at http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/

Update:The server is now working again and even the archive is not lost. I have to say thanks to Lucian Plesea, who drives this project.

Daily satellite pictures are not only useful, they show the impact of the weather on a bigger scale. With 250m per pixel resolution changes in land use, fires in amazon rainforest, huricanes and typhoon and ice shelfs are visible. With an interactive map interface climate changes become observable.

The project needs support: harddisks, time, money and publicity are helpful to ensure its continuation.

Here you can see everyday the earth and what has been captured by Daily Terra and prepared the day before: