Alan Hubert and Dixie Dansercoer collect snow-depth data for ESA s CryoSat-2 mission. They re seasoned polar explorers so they are used to dealing with physically demanding and downright harsh conditions but what they encountered during their three and a half-month expedition from Russia to Greenland via the North Pole was dangerous even for them.
New evidence indicates that Arctic areas with the thickest ice today probably melted out every year during the summer for about 1,600 years during the early Holocene (ca. 11.3-9.7k years ago), making the Arctic virtually ice-free. As I argue in my new book, this means that polar bears and other Arctic species are capable of…
Arctic Tipping Points - #6: Are We There Yet?What might cause the Arctic sea ice to have a tipping point?Are we about to reach, or have we already reached a tipping point?This series is a follow-on to my 3-part series Arctic Ice 2010.