NASA found a giant underground cavern two-thirds the area of Manhattan and almost 1,000 feet (300 meters) tall – growing at the bottom of Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica –one of several disturbing discoveries reported in a new NASA-led study of the disintegrating glacier. The findings show that as more heat and water get under the glacier, it melts faster, showing the need for detailed observations of Antarctic glaciers’ undersides in calculating how fast global sea levels will rise in response to climate change.
The “Planet Earth Report” connects you to headline news on the science, technology, discoveries, and events changing our planet and the future of the human species.
The “Planet Earth Report” connects you to headline news on the science, technology, discoveries, and events changing our planet and the future of the human species.
“The Arctic is currently warming two to three times faster than the rest of the globe, so naturally, glaciers and ice caps are going to react faster,” said Simon Pendleton, a doctoral researcher in University of Colorado Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR).
The “Planet Earth Report” connects you to headline news on the science, technology, discoveries, and events changing our planet and the future of the human species.
Epochs of intense climate change trigger the evolution of new species. The deep sea, the planet’s largest ecosystem, is an ancient ark of relics from the dinosaur era, where “living fossils” exist at the same time that new species are rapidly evolving. New research shows that evolution of new species to be highest in Earth’s coldest region, Antarctica, whose waters are still recovering from extinction events of tens of millions of years ago, when ice sheets began to dominate and water temperatures plummeted.
