For several months each year, Russia’s Lake Baikal is covered by a thick layer of ice. Formation begins in late-December, and by mid-January the entire lake is usually blanketed. Come spring, the lake begins its long, slow melt. Patches of open water usually appear
Over the winter of 2011–2012, the extent of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean was slightly below the 1979–2000 average, but conditions in the Bering Sea were different. There, sea ice extents were well above normal, reaching a record high in March 2012. Two factors
The cold waters of Hudson Bay are typically covered with ice from January to May each year and reach reaching ice-free status in mid-August, but by early April, 2012, ice breakup was well underway across the Bay. Bits of open water covered with some floating ice can
Shallow earthquake with recorded magnitude of 6.2 occured at Drake Passage between Argentina and Antartica on Saturday, April 14 , 2012 (10:56 UTC). Epicenter was 358 km (222 miles) SSE of Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina (57.588°S, 65.413°W). Recorded depth
As ESA’s Envisat satellite marks ten years in orbit, it continues to observe the rapid retreat of one of Antarctica’s ice shelves due to climate warming. One of the satellite’s first observations following its launch on 1 March 2002 was of break-up of a main
Arctic sea ice reached its maximum extent for the winter of 2011–2012 on March 18, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) has announced. (Extent is the total area of ocean in which ice concentration is at least 15 percent.) With a total extent of 15.24 million
A few weeks ago, NASA’s Terra satellite flew over East Antarctica and detected swirls of green amidst the ice off the Princess Astrid Coast. For three weeks since, scientists have been trying to figure out what Terra saw in this remote region of the world’s
The Ozone Mapper and Profiler Suite (OMPS) is one of five new satellite instruments on the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite. OMPS is sending back detailed information about the atmospheric gas that shields life from harmful levels of the
Off the northeastern edge of Antarctica’s Amery Ice Shelf lies Mackenzie Bay, which was painted with a ghostly blue-green mass in early February 2012. Icebergs sometimes interrupt flow of similarly colored tendrils northward across the ocean. Multiple factors
Antarctica has nearly 90% of the ice and 70% of the fresh water on Earth. The third-largest continent, it is one and a half the size of the US. More than 150 subglacial lakes have so far been discovered beneath Antarctica’s vast ice sheet. These lakes
