Methane Trapped in Ice

Bubbles of methane trapped in frozen Abrams lake, Canada.

Photographer Fikret Onal explains, "The plants on the lake bed release methane
gas and methane gets frozen once coming close enough to much colder lake surface
and they keep stacking up below once the weather gets colder and colder during
the winter season."

 "An iceberg twice the size of Manhattan tore off one of Greenland's largest glaciers, illustrating another dramatic change to the warming island.

For several years, scientists had been watching a long crack near the tip of the northerly Petermann Glacier. On Monday, NASA satellites showed it had broken completely, freeing an iceberg measuring 46 square miles.

A massive ice sheet covers about four-fifths of Greenland. Petermann Glacier is mostly on land, but a segment sticks out over water like a frozen tongue, and that's where the break occurred.

Many of Greenland's southern glaciers have been melting at an unusually rapid pace. The Petermann break brings large ice loss much farther north than in the past, said Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado."

 Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/07/18/glacier-twice-as-big-as-manhattan-snaps-off-greenland-ice-sheet/#ixzz227alOwY4

Photos taken in Svalbard, Norway. These icy islands of the Arctic Ocean are located halfway between Norway and the North Pole.

 "Rising temperatures caused by global warming has seen the polar bear's natural habitat fall apart in recent years, resulting in them having to swim longer distances to reach a food supply. Last year scientists at the University of Colorado in Boulder revealed water flowing from the North Atlantic into the Arctic is at its warmest level for more than 2,000 years. According to their research, the sea in the Gulf Stream between Greenland and the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard reached an average of 6C (42F) in recent summers, warmer than at natural peaks during Roman or Medieval times. Scientists fear the temperature spikes could lead to an ice-free Arctic in years to come and could endanger polar bears, who need the ice in order to survive. Studies show between 1979 and 2009 an area larger than the state of Alaska disappeared."

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2169124/Adorable-images-polar-bear-cub-hitching-ride-mothers-swim-Arctic-Ocean.html#ixzz1zl9yahA5