Most of Canada to receive emergency alert test today
The federal government will test its capacity to issue emergency alerts today, with the exception of Ontario, where the test will take place on May 15.
A new study suggests that Antarctica's ice shelves may be melting faster than previously believed, which is causing sea levels to rise at a more rapid pace and accelerating the dangers of climate change.
The study, published in the journal Science Advances on Aug. 12, was conducted by Caltech and Jet Propulsion Laboratory researchers. It's based on a model that accounts for a narrow ocean current, which runs along the Antarctic coast.
The current's flow patterns show how freshwater, which has melted from the ice shelves, can trap dense warm ocean water at the base of the ice, intensifying heat and, therefore, causing more ice to melt.
"If this mechanism that we've been studying is active in the real world, it may mean that ice shelf melt rates are 20 to 40 percent higher than the predictions in global climate models, which typically cannot simulate these strong currents near the Antarctic coast," Andy Thompson, one of the researchers and professor of environmental science and engineering, said in a Caltech news release.
According to the release, "ice shelves are outcroppings of the Antarctic ice sheet, found where the ice juts out from land and floats on top of the ocean."
Several hundred metres thick, the shelves offer a protective buffer for the mainland ice, blocking the whole ice sheet from flowing into the ocean.
"A warming atmosphere and warming oceans caused by climate change are increasing the speed at which these ice shelves are melting," says the news release, which is "threatening their ability to hold back the flow of the ice sheet."
The study was led by senior research scientist Mar Flexas, who said their climate model assessed a current which is often overlooked by other researchers: the Antarctic Coastal Current, which runs counter-clockwise around the entire Antarctic continent, and is often considered too small to offer relevant data.
"Large global climate models don't include this coastal current because it's very narrow—only about 20 kilometres wide, while most climate models only capture currents that are 100 kilometres across or larger," Flexas said in the release. "So, there is a potential for those models to not represent future melt rates very accurately."
Increased meltwater can escalate melting at West Antarctic ice shelves thousands of kilometres away from the peninsula, the research suggests.
The release says that "this remote warming mechanism may be part of the reason that the loss of volume from West Antarctic ice shelves has accelerated in recent decades."
"There are aspects of the climate system that we are still discovering," Thompson said in the release. "As we've made progress in our ability to model interactions between the ocean, ice shelves, and atmosphere, we're able to make more accurate predictions with better constraints on uncertainty. We may need to revisit some of the predictions of sea level rise in the next decades or century—that's work that we'll do going forward."
The federal government will test its capacity to issue emergency alerts today, with the exception of Ontario, where the test will take place on May 15.
Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, has made headlines with his recent arrival in the U.K., this time to celebrate all things Invictus. But upon the prince landing in the U.K., we have already had confirmation that King Charles III won't have time to see his youngest son during his brief visit.
An Ontario man found out that a line of credit he thought was insured actually isn't after his wife of 50 years died.
After more than a century, Boy Scouts of America is rebranding as Scouting America, another major shakeup for an organization that once proudly resisted change.
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
In March, Indonesian officials and local fishermen rescued 75 people from the overturned hull of a boat off the coast of Indonesia. Until now, little was known about why the boat capsized.
An Ontario woman said it would have been impossible to buy a house without her mother – an anecdote that animates the fact that over 17 per cent of Canadian homeowners born in the ‘90s own their property with their parents, according to a new report.
Canadian immigrants threatened by hostile regimes are urging parliamentarians to quickly pass the 'Countering Foreign Interference Act' so they can feel safe living in their adopted home.
A long-simmering feud between hip-hop superstars Drake and Kendrick Lamar reached a boiling point in recent days as the pair traded increasingly personal insults on a succession of diss tracks. Here’s a quick overview of what’s behind the ongoing beef.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.