sea level rise

Increasing ocean temperature threatens Greenland’s ice sheet

Written on January 25, 2021.

UCI and NASA JPL scientists study impact of warm, salty water beneath glaciers January 25, 2021 — Scientists at the University of California, Irvine and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have for the first time quantified how warming coastal waters are impacting individual glaciers in Greenland’s fjords. Their work is the subject of a study published recently in Science Advances. Working under the auspices of the Oceans Melting Greenland mission for the past five years, the researchers...

UCI-led team releases high-precision map of Antarctic ice sheet bed topography

Written on December 12, 2019.

New findings will help scientists predict climate change impact on frozen continent Irvine, Calif., Dec. 12, 2019 – A University of California, Irvine-led team of glaciologists has unveiled the most accurate portrait yet of the contours of the land beneath Antarctica’s ice sheet – and, by doing so, has helped identify which regions of the continent are going to be more, or less, vulnerable to future climate warming. Highly anticipated by the global cryosphere and environmental science communities,...

UCI, JPL glaciologists unveil most precise map ever of Antarctic ice velocity

Written on July 29, 2019.

Project utilized 25 years of data from six international satellite missions Irvine, Calif., July 29, 2019 – Constructed from a quarter century’s worth of satellite data, a new map of Antarctic ice velocity by glaciologists from the University of California, Irvine and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is the most precise ever created. Published today in a paper in the American Geophysical Union journal Geophysical Research Letters, the map is 10 times more accurate than previous renditions,...

Glaciers in East Antarctica also ‘imperiled’ by climate change, UCI researchers find

Written on July 26, 2018.

Usually seen as less vulnerable, they carry the potential to add 16 feet to global sea level Irvine, Calif., July 26, 2018 – A team of scientists from the University of California, Irvine has found evidence of significant mass loss in East Antarctica’s Totten and Moscow University glaciers, which, if they fully collapsed, could add 5 meters (16.4 feet) to the global sea level. In a paper published this week in the American Geophysical Union journal Geophysical Research Letters, the glaciologists...

In a warming climate, ocean- and land-based floods are a disastrous duo, UCI researchers find

Written on August 28, 2017.

Coastal areas are threatened by both oceanic and terrestrial flooding, and the combination of these factors is especially concerning as sea levels continue to rise. Untangling how oceans and rivers interact – their so-called compounding effects – is a challenge for scientists and engineers trying to estimate the current and future risk of flooding. UCI researchers have developed a new method to characterize this dual flood threat, finding that in a warming climate, future sea level rise will...

UCI, NASA reveal new details of Greenland ice loss

Written on February 9, 2017.

Data are dramatically increasing knowledge of how the ocean is melting the ice sheet Irvine, Calif., Feb. 9, 2017 – Less than a year after the first research flight kicked off NASA’s Oceans Melting Greenland campaign, data from the new program are providing a dramatic increase in knowledge of how Greenland’s ice sheet is melting from below. Two new research papers in the journal Oceanography, including one by UCI Earth system scientist Mathieu Morlighem, use OMG observations to document how...

NOAA Grants UCI $1.15 Million for Coastal Research

Written on November 8, 2016.

Nov. 8, 2016 – The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Centers for Coastal Science has awarded UC Irvine researchers $1.15 million for their efforts to understand and mitigate sea level rise and storm surge impacts on changing coastal landscapes. Funding comes through NOAA’s competitive Ecological Effects of Sea Level Rise (EESLR) program. With the four-year award, researchers will develop modeling tools to analyze how sediment management...

West Antarctic melt rate has tripled: UC Irvine-NASA

Written on December 2, 2014.

A comprehensive, 21-year analysis of the fastest-melting region of Antarctica has found that the melt rate of glaciers there has tripled during the last decade. Irvine, Calif., Dec. 2, 2014 – A comprehensive, 21-year analysis of the fastest-melting region of Antarctica has found that the melt rate of glaciers there has tripled during the last decade. The glaciers in the Amundsen Sea Embayment in West Antarctica are hemorrhaging ice faster than any other part of Antarctica and are the most...

A gamble of global proportions

Written on April 28, 2014.

UCI’s Michael Prather is a lead author on the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. The cherry blossoms came earlier than normal this year in Yokohama, Japan. By the time delegates from 70 countries, including UC Irvine’s Michael Prather, met to finalize another stark assessment for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, rain had whipped many of their delicate pink petals to the ground. Like much of the planet’s plant life, the iconic spring flowers bloom a week...

Antarctica Melting From Below

Written on June 17, 2013.

Jennifer A. Kingson, The New York Times Early Antarctic explorers used all sorts of colorful words for icebergs — “growlers,” “bergy bits” — as well as the geological term “calved” for when a wall of ice would break noisily from the Antarctic coastline and start floating north. (Some wrote in their diaries that they could tell how recently an iceberg had calved by how degraded it looked). More recently, the calving of enormous icebergs, some the size of Delaware, has been blamed for the...

Tag: sea level rise