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Southern Ocean warming – a consequence of climate change – threatens the viability of 60% of Antarctic ice shelves

Published on November 03, 2025
Press release CNRS / UGA

An international team led by scientists from Université Grenoble Alpes and CNRS, within the Grenoble Institute of Environmental Geosciences (IGE / OSUG – CNRS/INRAE/IRD/UGA – Grenoble INP-UGA), has demonstrated in a study published on 29 October 2025 in Nature that 60% of the floating ice shelves surrounding the Antarctic ice sheet could be destined to disappear in the long term. These ice shelves currently act as a brake on the contribution of the Antarctic ice sheet to global sea-level (…)

For the first time, scientists observed the ‘hidden swirls’ that affect the flow of sand, rocks and snow

Published on September 15, 2025

MeSSrro/Unsplash
Itai Einav, University of Sydney
What looks like ordinary sand, rocks or snow flowing in one direction can actually hide swirling currents that move in multiple directions beneath the surface.
When grains move in a landslide, most follow the steepest downhill path. This is the “primary flow”, where particles largely follow the herd. But some grains move sideways or swirl in hidden patterns, forming “secondary flows” that subtly influence how far and fast the material (…)

Digging into glacier ice to understand antibiotic resistance

Published on September 03, 2025

Crédit image slider : Bertrand Delapierre
What if glaciers could reveal the hidden history of antibiotic resistance ? The European project Paleo-MARE, supported by an ERC Consolidator Grant, explores a little-known but pressing question : how heavy metal pollution may have shaped the persistence of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in the environment.
Why drill glaciers to study a global health threat ?
Microorganisms are at the heart of Earth’s ecosystems. But over centuries, human (…)

Substantial global glacier loss unavoidable, but strong climate policies will save twice as much ice as today’s path

Published on June 23, 2025

An international study, published in Science, has found that only 24% of present-day glacier mass will remain if the world were to warm to 2.7°C, the trajectory set by current climate policies. In contrast, limiting warming to 1.5°C — the target of the Paris Agreement — would preserve 54% of glacier mass.
A team of 21 scientists from ten countries used eight glacier models to calculate the potential ice loss of the more than 200,000 glaciers outside Greenland and Antarctica under a wide (…)

New policy recommendations to respond to sea-level rise and a changing cryosphere

Published on June 16, 2025

As sea levels continue to rise and the cryosphere transforms under the pressure of climate change, how can societies adapt ? What does the latest science say — and how can it guide action ?
The European project PROTECT – Projecting sea-level rise : from ice sheets to local implications, coordinated by the Institut des Géosciences de l’Environnement (IGE-CNRS), has just published a series of policy recommendations. These are endorsed by the European projects CoCliCo and OCEAN:ICE, and offer (…)

The voices of glaciers : stories of grief and hope amidst shrinking glaciers in the tropics

Published on April 02, 2025

During the Celebrations of the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation 2025 in Paris on the 20th and 21st March 2025 the IGE has presented the results of several initiatives. Among those, the book “The voices of glaciers : stories of grief and hope amidst shrinking glaciers in the tropics”, co-edited by UNESCO and IRD Editions.
As glacier melting continues unabated at all latitudes, the loss of glaciers in the tropics provides an early glimpse of how a world without ice might be. (…)

A novel study reveals a significant decline in glaciers on a global scale

Published on February 20, 2025

Since 2000, the world’s glaciers have lost 5% of their initial volume, and 273 billion tonnes of ice are disappearing every year - the equivalent of 3 Olympic swimming pools per second. These are the results of an in-depth study of the global evolution of glaciers (excluding the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets) between 2000 and 2023, based for the first time on a combination of field measurements and satellite observations. This unprecedented study was carried out by the Glambie (…)

Biodiversity and Climate COPs : turning promises into action

Published on February 04, 2025

Author of a publication on nature conservation targets, Ignacio Palomo, researcher IRD at the institut des géosciences de l’environnement (IGE-OSUG, CNRS/IRD/UGA/INRAE/GrenobleINP-UGA) analyses the expectations and challenges of the Biodiversity and Climate COPs.
« As you probably saw in the news, at the end of 2024 world leaders met in Cali, Colombia for the COP16 on biodiversity and in Baku, Azerbaijan for the COP29 on the climate.. For the uninitiated, COP stands for Conference of (…)

Avalanches : unlikely allies of glaciers

Published on January 22, 2025

Avalanches are often seen as a danger in mountain sports, but they also have a beneficial side in that they supply many high-altitude glaciers with large quantities of snow, which they redistribute by gravity from the surrounding steep slopes.
A team from the Grenoble Institute of Environmental Geosciences (IGE) recently set out to quantify for the first time this avalanche snow supply to Argentière Glacier in the Mt Blanc massif. The difficulty of this study lies in the fact that it is (…)

A New Map of Antarctica Reveals Never-Before-Explored Seafloors

Published on January 09, 2025

Around the edges of the Antarctic ice sheet, glaciers flow toward the ocean, forming long floating ice shelves that regulate the flow of ice from the sheet into the ocean.
The increased loss of mass from the Antarctic ice sheet has been attributed to the significant weakening of these floating ice shelves. This weakening originates from the advection of warm, saline waters of circumpolar origin onto the continental shelf. These waters are then channeled beneath the ice shelves, where they (…)