Snow and Avalanches News

November 17, 2025

Top Headlines

Massive Hidden Waves Are Rapidly Melting Greenland’s Glaciers

Nov. 14, 2025 Researchers in Greenland used a 10-kilometer fiber-optic cable to track how iceberg calving stirs up warm seawater. The resulting surface tsunamis and massive hidden underwater waves intensify melting at the glacier face. This powerful mixing effect ...

Satellite Images Reveal the Fastest Antarctic Glacier Retreat Ever

Nov. 14, 2025 Hektoria Glacier’s sudden eight-kilometer collapse stunned scientists, marking the fastest modern ice retreat ever recorded in Antarctica. Its flat, below-sea-level ice plain allowed huge slabs of ice to detach rapidly once retreat began. Seismic ...

Space Dust Reveals How Fast the Arctic Is Changing

Nov. 13, 2025 Arctic sea ice is disappearing fast, and scientists have turned to an unexpected cosmic clue—space dust—to uncover how ice has changed over tens of thousands of years. By tracking helium-3–bearing dust trapped (or blocked) by ancient ice, ...

9,000-year-old Ice Melt Shows How Fast Antarctica Can Fall Apart

Nov. 9, 2025 Around 9,000 years ago, East Antarctica went through a dramatic meltdown that was anything but isolated. Scientists have discovered that warm deep ocean water surged beneath the region’s floating ice shelves, causing them to collapse and ...

Laser Satellites Expose a Secret Antarctic Carbon Burst

Nov. 8, 2025 A new study shows that the Southern Ocean releases far more carbon dioxide in winter than once thought. By combining laser satellite data with AI analysis, scientists managed to “see” through the polar darkness for the first time. The results ...

Antarctica’s Collapse May Already Be Unstoppable, Scientists Warn

Nov. 6, 2025 Researchers warn Antarctica is undergoing abrupt changes that could trigger global consequences. Melting ice, collapsing ice shelves, and disrupted ocean circulation threaten sea levels, ecosystems, and climate stability. Wildlife such as penguins ...

Frozen for 6 Million Years, Antarctic Ice Rewrites Earth’s Climate Story

Nov. 5, 2025 Scientists discovered 6-million-year-old ice in Antarctica, offering the oldest direct record of Earth’s ancient atmosphere and climate. The finding reveals a dramatic cooling trend and promises insights into greenhouse gas changes over millions ...

Earth Has Hit Its First Climate Tipping Point, Scientists Warn

Oct. 29, 2025 Global scientists warn that humanity is on the verge of crossing irreversible climate thresholds, with coral reefs already at their tipping point and polar ice sheets possibly beyond recovery. The Global Tipping Points Report 2025 reveals how rising ...

Antarctic Robot ‘Lassie’ Uncovers Thousands of Icefish Nests Beneath Antarctic Ice

Oct. 29, 2025 Beneath the ice of Antarctica’s Weddell Sea, scientists discovered a vast, organized city of fish nests revealed after the colossal A68 iceberg broke away. Using robotic explorers, they found over ...

Glaciers’ Secret Cooling Power Won’t Last Much Longer

Oct. 26, 2025 Scientists have uncovered that glaciers can temporarily cool the air around them, delaying some effects of global warming. This self-cooling, driven by katabatic winds, is nearing its peak and will likely reverse in the next two decades. Once ...

China’s Coastal Cities Are Sinking as Seas Rise at Record Speed

Oct. 23, 2025 Sea levels are rising faster than at any time in 4,000 years, scientists report, with China’s major coastal cities at particular risk. The rapid increase is driven by warming oceans and melting ice, while human activities like groundwater pumping ...

Scientists Just Found Hidden Life Thriving Beneath the Arctic Ice

Oct. 21, 2025 Melting Arctic ice is revealing a hidden world of nitrogen-fixing bacteria beneath the surface. These microbes, not the usual cyanobacteria, enrich the ocean with nitrogen, fueling algae growth that supports the entire marine food chain. As ice ...

Latest Headlines

updated 12:43pm EST

A Clue to Ancient Life? What Scientists Found Inside Mars’ Frozen Vortex

Oct. 19, 2025 Mars’ north polar vortex locks its atmosphere in extreme cold and darkness, freezing out water vapor and triggering a dramatic rise in ozone. Scientists found that the lack of sunlight and moisture ...

Earth’s Climate Just Crossed a Line We Can’t Ignore

Oct. 13, 2025 Humanity has reached the first Earth system tipping point, the widespread death of warm-water coral reefs, marking the beginning of irreversible planetary shifts. As global temperatures move beyond ...

Scientists Just Recreated a Wildfire That Made Its Own Weather

Oct. 2, 2025 In 2020, California’s Creek Fire became so intense that it generated its own thunderstorm, a phenomenon called a pyrocumulonimbus cloud. For years, scientists struggled to replicate these explosive ...

1,000 Swiss Glaciers Already Gone, and the Melting Is Speeding Up

Oct. 2, 2025 Swiss glaciers lost nearly 3% of their volume in 2025, following a snow-poor winter and scorching summer heatwaves. The melt has been so extreme that some glaciers lost more than two meters of ice ...

The Shocking Reason Arctic Rivers Are Turning Rusty Orange

Sep. 22, 2025 Researchers found that ice can trigger stronger chemical reactions than liquid water, dissolving iron minerals in extreme cold. Freeze-thaw cycles amplify the effect, releasing iron into rivers and ...

Why Alaska’s Salmon Streams Are Suddenly Bleeding Orange

Sep. 18, 2025 Warming Arctic permafrost is unlocking toxic metals, turning Alaska’s once-clear rivers into orange, acid-laced streams. The shift, eerily similar to mine pollution but entirely natural, threatens ...

Tiny Skaters Beneath the Arctic Ice Rewrite the Limits of Life

Sep. 12, 2025 Hidden within Arctic ice, diatoms are proving to be anything but dormant. New Stanford research shows these glass-walled algae glide through frozen channels at record-breaking subzero temperatures, ...

Antarctica’s Frozen Heart Is Warming Fast, and Models Missed It

Sep. 9, 2025 New research has revealed that East Antarctica’s vast and icy interior is heating up faster than its coasts, fueled by warm air carried from the Southern Indian Ocean. Using 30 years of weather ...

Satellites Confirm 1990s Sea-Level Predictions Were Shockingly Accurate

Sep. 6, 2025 Satellite data reveals sea-level rise has unfolded almost exactly as predicted by 1990s climate models, with one key underestimation: melting ice sheets. Researchers stress the importance of refining ...

Central Asia’s Last Stable Glaciers Just Started to Collapse

Sep. 3, 2025 Snowfall shortages are now destabilizing some of the world’s last resilient glaciers, as shown by a new study in Tajikistan’s Pamir Mountains. Using a monitoring station on Kyzylsu Glacier, ...

NASA’s PREFIRE Satellites Reveal a Secret Glow Escaping from Our Planet

Aug. 17, 2025 With its two tiny CubeSats, NASA’s PREFIRE mission is capturing invisible heat escaping from Earth, offering clues to how ice, clouds, and storms influence the climate system. The insights could ...

Scientists Just Measured How Fast Glaciers Carve the Earth

Aug. 9, 2025 Scientists used machine learning to reveal how glaciers erode the land at varying speeds, shaped by climate, geology, and heat. The findings help guide global planning from environmental management ...

Scientists Finally Solve the Mystery of What Triggers Lightning

Aug. 1, 2025 A Penn State-led research team has unraveled the long-standing mystery of how lightning begins inside thunderclouds. Their findings offer the first quantitative, physics-based explanation for ...

Satellites Just Revealed a Hidden Global Water Crisis—and It’s Worse Than Melting Ice

July 27, 2025 For over two decades, satellites have quietly documented a major crisis unfolding beneath our feet: Earth's continents are drying out at unprecedented rates. Fueled by climate change, ...

332 Colossal Canyons Just Revealed Beneath Antarctica’s Ice

Aug. 9, 2025 Deep beneath the Antarctic seas lies a hidden network of 332 colossal submarine canyons, some plunging over 4,000 meters, revealed in unprecedented detail by new high-resolution mapping. These ...

Snowless Winter? Arctic Field Team Finds Flowers and Meltwater Instead

July 23, 2025 Scientists in Svalbard were shocked to find rain and greenery instead of snow during Arctic winter fieldwork. The event highlights not just warming—but a full seasonal shift with major consequences ...

Frozen for 12,000 Years, This Alpine Ice Core Captures the Rise of Civilization

July 16, 2025 An ancient glacier high in the French Alps has revealed the oldest known ice in Western Europe—dating back over 12,000 years to the last Ice Age. This frozen archive, meticulously analyzed by ...

What Radar Found Beneath Antarctica Could Slow Ice Melt and Rising Seas

July 22, 2025 Ancient river landscapes buried beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet have been uncovered by radar, revealing vast, flat surfaces formed over 80 million years ago before Antarctica froze. These hidden ...

Why America’s Still Freezing — Even as the World Heats Up

July 12, 2025 Even in a warming climate, brutal cold snaps still hammer parts of the U.S., and a new study uncovers why. High above the Arctic, two distinct polar vortex patterns — both distorted and displaced ...

Melting Glaciers Are Awakening Earth's Most Dangerous Volcanoes

July 8, 2025 As glaciers melt around the world, long-dormant volcanoes may be waking up beneath the ice. New research reveals that massive ice sheets have suppressed eruptions for thousands of years, building up ...

Scientists Thought the Arctic Was Sealed in Ice — They Were Wrong

July 5, 2025 For decades, scientists believed the Arctic Ocean was sealed under a massive slab of ice during the coldest ice ages — but new research proves otherwise. Sediment samples from the seafloor, paired ...

Antarctica’s Slow Collapse Caught on Camera—and It’s Accelerating

July 7, 2025 Long-lost 1960s aerial photos let Copenhagen researchers watch Antarctica’s Wordie Ice Shelf crumble in slow motion. By fusing film with satellites, they discovered warm ocean water, not surface ...

Antarctica’s Ocean Flip: Satellites Catch Sudden Salt Surge Melting Ice from Below

July 2, 2025 A massive and surprising change is unfolding around Antarctica. Scientists have discovered that the Southern Ocean is getting saltier, and sea ice is melting at record speed, enough to match the size ...

Tiny Creatures, Massive Impact: How Zooplankton Store 65 Million Tonnes of Carbon Annually

June 27, 2025 Zooplankton like copepods aren’t just fish food—they’re carbon-hauling powerhouses. By diving deep into the ocean each winter, they’re secretly stashing 65 million tonnes of carbon far below ...

Hidden Carbon Giants: Satellite Data Reveals a 40-Year Arctic Peatland Surge

June 20, 2025 Arctic peatlands are expanding with rising temperatures, storing more carbon at least for now. But future warming could reverse this benefit, releasing massive ...

How Life Endured the Snowball Earth: Evidence from Antarctic Meltwater Ponds

June 19, 2025 During Earth's ancient Snowball periods, when the entire planet was wrapped in ice, life may have endured in tiny meltwater ponds on the surface of equatorial glaciers. MIT researchers ...

Winter Sea Ice Supercharges Southern Ocean’s CO2 Uptake

June 18, 2025 A breakthrough study has uncovered that the Southern Ocean's power to pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere fluctuates dramatically depending on winter sea ice. When sea ice lingers longer ...

123,000-Year-Old Coral Fossils Warn of Sudden, Catastrophic Sea-Level Rise

June 23, 2025 Ancient coral fossils from the remote Seychelles islands have unveiled a dramatic warning for our future—sea levels can rise in sudden, sharp bursts even when global temperatures stay ...

Toxic Tides: Centuries-Old Mercury Is Flooding the Arctic Food Chain

June 13, 2025 Despite falling global mercury emissions, mercury levels in Arctic wildlife continue to rise. A new study reveals that ocean currents are delivering legacy mercury pollution from distant regions like ...

Scientists Say Next Few Years Vital to Securing the Future of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet

June 3, 2025 Collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could be triggered with very little ocean warming above present-day, leading to a devastating four meters of global sea level rise to play out over hundreds ...