Ice sheet melting from Greenland's glaciers accounts for an increasing proportion of global sea level rise, losing ~330 billion tonnes of ice per year during 2006-2018 (compared to ~120 billion tonnes of ice per year during 1901-1990). A new study published in Nature Communications examined recent changes at K.I.V Steenstrups Nordre Bræ (66.53°N, 34.57°W), a... Continue Reading →
As the surface ocean warms and polar ice sheets melt due to increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, near-surface stratification is increasing almost everywhere, including the major deep water formation regions in the high-latitude North Atlantic and around Antarctica. As a result, the global Meridional Overturning Circulation (MOC), also known as the global ocean... Continue Reading →
The freshwater cycle in the Earth System is a delicate balance between the net loss (i.e., evaporation > precipitation) in the warm tropical-subtropical oceans, the net gain (i.e., precipitation > evaporation) in the cold polar oceans, and the net poleward transport by the atmosphere. These processes maintain the tropical-subtropical oceans salty and the polar oceans... Continue Reading →
Heat waves are the leading weather‐related cause of death in the U.S. For example, the most recent U.S. extreme heat waves that occurred over the Great Plains in 2011 and 2012 caused 362 deaths. These events are unusual and largely unpredictable beyond the synoptic time scale. However, their number and severity have increased and are projected... Continue Reading →
A new study appeared in Nature Geoscience (Jenkins et al., 2018) analyzed ocean temperature, salinity, dissolved-oxygen and current measurements from 2000 to 2016 near the Dotson Ice Shelf in the Amundsen Sea to determine temporal changes in net basal melting. The study showed that a decadal cycle dominates the ocean record, which is highly correlates with... Continue Reading →
A short article appeared in Nature Climate Change compared Antarctic ice-sheet mass balance between satellite-derived observations and IPCC-AR5 model-based projections. Satellite-derived observations show that Antarctic ice-sheet has decreased since 1992 contributing around 0.27 mm-per-yr sea level rise. During the last decade (2007-2017), the contribution from Antarctica increased to around 0.55 mm-per-yr . This value is around 30... Continue Reading →
This special report of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS) presents some extreme events in 2016, such as the record global heat, the heat across Asia, the 2015-16 El Niño and a marine heat wave off the coast of Alaska, and discusses how human-caused climate change may have affected the strength and likelihood of these extreme events.... Continue Reading →
According to the US monthly drought outlook issued by NOAA CPC in November 30, the current severe drought conditions will maintain over the southern US. This is likely due to the developing La Nina condition in the Pacific. During La Niña, the winter atmospheric jet stream in the Pacific often takes an unusually wavy path... Continue Reading →
Sang-Ki Lee (Ph.D), Oceanographer at the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory of NOAA Hi. I am an Oceanographer working on a range of topics related to ocean and climate, such as El Nino - Southern Oscillation, Extreme weather events, Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), and Antarctic sea ice. You can find more about my research on my... Continue Reading →
Ocean to Climate 