News
- Details
- Category: Global News
On 14 August 2021, researchers measured the southern peak of Sweden's highest mountain, Kebnekaise, at 2,094.6 meters above sea level. This is the lowest height since measurements began in the 1940s, and almost two meters lower than the same time last year.
From the mid-1940s on, there has been an unbroken series of measurements of Kebnekaise's southern peak, carried out by researchers at Stockholm University's research station in Tarfala. The measurements show that the south peak's snow drift varied in both height and shape during the 20th century. The height varies two to three meters between summer and winter. Normally, the peak is at its highest in May and lowest in September.
- Details
- Category: Global News
The World Climate Research Programme Academy aims to support scientists in accessing the training they need to meet future challenges. As part of this, they have launched a global stocktake of training needs – and they need your input! Survey deadline 26 November 2021.
Now, more than ever, the world needs climate scientists. A key part of building the climate research workforce needed to address the challenges of this century is broadening access to climate science training. The WCRP Academy is one of the new lighthouse activities of the World Climate Research Programme, designed to make positive steps towards giving more scientists access to the training they need to meet the challenges of tomorrow.
- Details
- Category: Global News
Human activity has warmed the planet at a rate that is unprecedented in at least the last 2,000 years, a landmark IPCC report says. Continued inaction will have dire consequences across every corner of the globe, from the depths of the oceans to the highest peaks of our changing mountains.
The language in the most recent United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is stark: it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the Earth’s atmosphere, ocean, and land – and the resulting changes to many of our planetary support systems are irreversible over hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
- Details
- Category: Global News
New research provides the first scientific evidence of overwintering fires in Alaska and Canada boreal forests. Due to climate change, these “zombie fires” appear to be increasing in frequency.
The study published in Nature was led by Vrije University Amsterdam with co-authors at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s Alaska Fire Service. The researchers found that extreme summer temperatures and intense burning enable some wildfires to smolder in peat beneath snow during winter, even when temperatures drop to minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit. When warm and dry conditions arrive in spring, these fires flare up.
- Details
- Category: Global News
Glacier runoff from one of the largest icefields in North America has been increasing for more than three decades, researchers from the Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks have found.
As the Juneau Icefield continues to lose mass, the flow will increase until 'peak runoff' is reached, the researchers predicted.
- Details
- Category: 20 Years of Our Changing Mountains
For over 20 years, the Mountain Legacy Project has been capturing change in Canada’s mountain landscapes through repeat photography. This interactive photo essay offers a glimpse at some of these incredible images and the landscapes of our changing mountains over time.
As the MRI Coordination Office celebrates its 20th anniversary, we also take this opportunity to reflect on our changing mountains past, present, and future, and the role of the research community in both shaping and telling their stories. In this interactive photo essay, Mary Sanseverino of the Mountain Legacy Project shares some of this project's amazing work capturing change in Canada's mountains through the world’s largest collection of systematic high-resolution historic mountain photographs and a vast and growing collection of repeat images.
- Details
- Category: MRI News
What are the main challenges that impede sustainable mountain governance at the local level? Research undertaken by the MRI’s Mountain Governance Working Group seeks to shed light on this important question.
There is growing consensus that securing a sustainable future for our changing mountains requires effective governance. However, the biogeophysical complexity and diversity of mountain social-ecological systems, their vulnerability to climatic and global change processes, their status as commons, and the vital importance of their ecosystem services for people living both in and far from mountains mean that mountains pose a particular set of governance challenges – few of which are well understood. New research conducted by the MRI’s Mountain Governance Working Group and published this month in the journal Mountain Research and Development seeks to address this knowledge gap.
- Details
- Category: Global News
The Glacier Model Intercomparison Project (GlacierMIP3) is beginning its third phase. GlacierMIP is a framework for a coordinated intercomparison of global-scale glacier mass change models to foster model improvements and reduce uncertainties in global glacier projections.
Submission deadline 1 December 2021.
