Europe news
fromwww.theguardian.com
3 days agoArctic ice loss brings dual heatwaves to Europe and eastern Asia
Ice loss in the Barents Sea is linked to increased frequency of concurrent summer heatwaves in Europe and eastern Asia.
Imagine waking up on a ship surrounded by icebergs, camping in the snowy wilderness and kayaking among the exhalations of humpback whales. You can also take part in a polar plunge, board small zodiac boats to search for leopard seals and collect samples for science research.
He had flown in from Mar-a-Lago and, he told me, was there to observe. The next day, he watched as Åsa Rennermalm, a Rutgers University professor who studies polar regions, sat onstage with European foreign ministers and spoke out against cuts to U.S. science funding. "A leading US Arctic scientist is on stage absolutely ripping her country to the delight of the audience," Dans wrote on X. "Embarassing." He punctuated his post with an American-flag emoji.
In Berlin, hospitals and clinics and working nonstop to treat a surge of patients with injuries from falling on icy pavements. Surgeons have been working through the night to cope with the influx, with many patients suffering broken bones, concussions and even near-paralysis from falls according to reporting in the Berliner Zeitung. Meanwhile, on Thursday night alone, police in Hanover and the surrounding region recorded 37 traffic accidents due to slippery roads, though thankfully only one person was slightly injured.
A severe winter storm that brought crippling freezing rain, sleet and snow to a large part of the U.S. in late January 2026 left a mess in states from New Mexico to New England. Hundreds of thousands of people lost power across the South as ice pulled down tree branches and power lines, more than a foot of snow fell in parts of the Midwest and Northeast, and many states faced bitter cold that was expected to linger for days.
If anyone knows exactly what to wear to stay warm in cold weather, it's the people who live in these places. So I asked seven writers who reside in some of the coldest cities on Earth to recommend the gear they swear by. One writer in Mongolia wore a pair of foot warmers on a nine-day dog sledding adventure. Another in Winnipeg, Canada, shared a pair of gloves she's dubbed long johns for your fingers.
Changes in the Antarctic do not stay in the Antarctic. Though Antarctica is far away, changes here will impact the rest of the world through changes in sea level, oceanic and atmospheric connections and circulation changes.
Wind chill is a measure of how quickly bodies lose heat when you combine low temperatures with high winds. And wind chill conditions can be dangerous. "The stronger the winds [and] the colder it is, the more likely you are to develop frostbite in a short amount of time or hypothermia," says Jessica Lee of the National Weather Service's Weather Prediction Center.
The reason we can gracefully glide on an ice-skating rink or clumsily slip on an icy sidewalk is that the surface of ice is coated by a thin watery layer. Scientists generally agree that this lubricating, liquidlike layer is what makes ice slippery. They disagree, though, about why the layer forms. Three main theories about the phenomenon have been debated over the past two centuries. Last year, researchers in Germany put forward a fourth hypothesis that they say solves the puzzle.
Ice-sheet retreat lined up with low algae growth over the past ~500,000 years, implying less CO₂ uptake in parts of the Southern Ocean during warm periods. The study points to iceberg-delivered, iron-rich sediments from West Antarctica during warm intervals, not windblown dust. The iron-bearing minerals in these sediments were highly weathered and not readily bioavailable to marine algae. If WAIS keeps shrinking, similar sediment delivery could weaken Southern Ocean carbon uptake, creating feedback that could amplify climate change.
Climate change which U.S. President Donald Trump calls the greatest con job ever perpetrated in the world is precisely what is driving the push to gain control of Greenland, an ambition openly declared by Trump. Human-caused global warming is reaching record levels in the Arctic region. This triggers ice melt, opening new shipping routes that major powers want to control, as well as theoretically easier access to the island's resources minerals and fossil fuels.
Sea levels are rising faster than at any point in human history, and for every foot that waters rise, 100 million people lose their homes. At current projections, that means about 300 million people will be forced to move in the decades to come, along with the social and political conflict as people migrate inland. Despite this looming crisis, the world still lacks specific, reliable forecasts
That seemingly paradoxical dynamic results from several factors. Foremost among them is the rebound of land beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet, a mile-thick body of glacial ice that covers 80 percent of the island and is being lost to melting at a rate of roughly 200 billion tons each year. As the ice sheet loses mass, the land beneath rises.
When we envision the South Pole, we tend to think of a fixed point on Earth. But it is more fluid than you might suppose. For starters, the geographic South Pole is situated at the southern tip of Earth's axis, pretty much right in the middle of Antarctica. But this place on our planet does not coincide with Earth's magnetic or geomagnetic South Polesthose are related to the planet's magnetic field and are located on the Adelie Coast and near Russia's Vostok Station, respectively.