Tag: Currents
A rapid shift in ocean currents could imperil the world’s largest ice shelf
Antarctica’s largest ice shelf, buttressing a dozen major glaciers and slowing their flow into the ocean, may be surprisingly sensitive to warming.
Several thousand years ago, the Ross Ice Shelf and the glaciers feeding it thinned dramatically, causing sea level to rise. A new study, published April 23 in Nature Communications, suggests this was triggered by a rearrangement of ocean currents set off by a minor amount of ocean warming — just half a degree Celsius.
Rip Currents Don’t Have to Be So Deadly
This article was originally published in Hakai Magazine.
On a sweltering day in July 2019, Summer Locknick plodded along Cavendish Beach on the coast of Canada’s Prince Edward Island, among hundreds of people lounging on the red-tinted sand. The air smelled of sunscreen as the visitors worked on their tans, blew up inflatable rafts, and cooled off in the sea. Locknick, however, was not there to relax. With a GPS unit and a tablet in hand, she circulated in the