A New Map Tracks the World's Largest Glaciers

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January 04, 2023

Dear Reader, I'm covering for Andrea Thompson today. In the last several decades, scientists have repeatedly changed their predictions about how fast the arctic is melting. An aggressive positive feedback loop of lost ice, warming ocean temperatures, and further ice melting is now leading some to estimate that the arctic will be completely free of summer ice within the next 20 years. Maybe sooner. Now, scientists at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center have created the first systematic ranking of the planet's some 200,000 glaciers, in order to track their changes. Check out the results in this week's top story.

Andrea Gawrylewski, Chief Newsletter Editor

Conservation A New Map Tracks the World's Largest Glaciers A visualization compares the forms of Earth's largest flows of ice By Theo Nicitopoulos,Amanda Montañez

Climate Change Financial Firms May Have to Reveal their Climate Risk And public companies may have to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions, if regulators finalize proposed rules By Avery Ellfeldt,E&E News

Animals Storm-Chasing Seabirds Ride Out Hurricanes from Inside Streaked shearwaters head deep into hurricanes to avoid crash landings By Jesse Greenspan

Sponsor Content Provided by Battelle Climate Resilience: Impactful Innovation is Needed Today What's most needed right now are outcome-driven, scientific approaches committed to delivering breakthrough technologies and capabilities—ones that leverage the fundamental knowledge of the past and apply it in new mission-driven methods that reach beyond what is possible today.

Conservation Saving Coral Reefs with Dental Tech Dental scanners could help researchers diagnose stressed-out baby corals By Susan Cosier

Arts If Future Humans Terraformed a New Earth, Could They Get It Right? A novel that redefines personhood, greed and despair in biotech, arguing for a singular reality, and more books By Amy Brady

Water How Water Cycles Can Help Prevent Disastrous Floods and Drought To prevent devastating droughts and floods, humanity can tune in to natural solutions to repair water cycles that human development has disrupted By Erica Gies

Engineering How to Construct Buildings That Have a Positive Impact on Climate and Biodiversity Making buildings part of a circular economy that minimizes the waste of materials could yield huge environmental rewards By Katharine Sanderson

Policy What's on the Horizon for 2023 Scientific American editors share what scientific events they are paying attention to as 2023 begins By The Editors

FROM THE STORE Special Editions Volume 29, Issue 3s

QUOTE OF THE DAY "The more accurately we can map glacier outlines, the better we can track their melting due to climate change." Ann Windnagel, research assistant at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center

FROM THE ARCHIVE The Arctic Is Breaking Climate Records, Altering Weather Worldwide The Arctic climate is shattering record after record, altering weather worldwide By Jennifer A. Francis | April 2018

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