Almost one-fifth of the world’s population depends on rivers coming from the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau. Yet, only one in a thousand glaciers and lakes in this region have monitoring stations and constraints on the hydrological cycle are poor, Hans Christian Steen-Larsen and colleagues writes in a comment in Nature. 

Last Easter, Harald Sodemann asked Bjerknes Centre scientists to bring snow home from the mountains. Read his account from a skiing citizen science project here.

Climate-Ocean research and tipping points are common denominators in three new EU funded research projects at the Bjerknes Centre. The project coordinators Christoph Heinze, Noel Keenlyside and Svein Østerhus together with Petra Langebroek received a nice pre-Christmas present, as EU have invited three new projects for funding negotiations. 

Ice from the Eemian, 125,000 years ago, has been found in ice cores from Greenland. But what did the ice sheet look like then? Andreas Plach writes about challenges in modeling past ice sheets. 

Vannet som strømmer inn i Barentshavet og Polhavet er blitt varmere det siste hundreåret. Fra år til år er det likevel strømmens styrke som regulerer hvor mye varme sjøisen utsettes for.  

– We are part of the delegations, but we are not heard when it matters, Mari Hasle Einang of the Norwegian Children and Youth Council said at the Arctic-Pacific side event at the climate top meeting COP24 in Katowice, Poland

Some of the strongest cyclones that have hit northwestern Australia would have been more dangerous in a future, warmer climate. 

In the Arctic, ice on land and at sea is rapidly decreasing. In the Pacific, island nations are threatened by sea level rise. For people in the tropics and in the Arctic, climate change is real and close. In many ways, these two regions are the frontlines of climate change.

Large variability is observed in the northern extension of the Gulf Stream, but so far there are no signs of a weakened circulation.

The temperature of the subpolar North Atlantic is going lower. This implies decreasing cod stocks in the Barents Sea over the next five to six years, shows study.

Hear interviews and and conversations with the climate experts at the Bjerknes Centre. We alternate between English and Norwegian podcasts.

“I’m looking forward to going back into the field”, says PhD student Sonja Wahl, who recently returned from her first fieldwork on Greenland.

Three-week course in October guided by UiB and Bjerknes Professors.

All new Explore the Earth is a virtual exhibition of the earth system – for those who want to learn more about climate modeling.

Do we have the right tools to reach the targets agreed upon in Paris? Do climate models deliver what we need to tackle climate change? These questions were on the agenda for Norwegian climate modelers last week. 

By taking up CO₂, the oceans slow down the pace of climate change. But this invaluable service of the oceans comes at a cost. Are Olsen, Nadine Goris, Siv Kari Lauvset and Ingunn Skjelvan are revisiting the problem of ocean acidification in a new Foresight Brief published by the UN Environment. 

World Climate Research Programme office to coordinate from the Bjerknes Centre.

Lea Svendsen was at first surprised to see how the Pacific impacted winter temperatures in the Arctic. Now, her results have been published in Nature Climate Change, while the Pacific transitions into a warm phase again. 

The Arctic is about to shrink, shows a new study, as an important part of the Arctic Ocean shifts over to an Atlantic climate regime. The rapid climate shift occurs in the northern Barents Sea—the Arctic warming hotspot where the surface warming and loss of winter sea ice is largest in the entire Arctic. 

Follow a seminar on new results and the coming IPCC-report in Oslo today.