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Antarctica : what temperature variations since the last ice age ?

Published on June 04, 2021
CNRS press release

Antarctica has experienced substantial temperature changes, particularly since the last ice age. An international collaboration involving CNRS scientists has just challenged previously accepted estimates of these variations with new measurements published June 4, 2021 in Science. Their study highlights the differences between the functioning of East and West Antarctica, linked in particular to different variations in their altitude.
Scientists have produced the most reliable estimates to (...)

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A new project started at IGE : The Scale-Aware Sea Ice Project (SASIP)

Published on May 27, 2021

Last month, a new project coordinated by the IGE has started. With 10 international partners from France, Norway, the United States, Italy, the United Kingdom and Germany, the SASIP project aims to develop a new model for sea ice - the large sheet of ice floating on the surface of the polar oceans - capable of resolving the complexity of its dynamics in order to improve its representation in the future generation of climate models. SASIP also aims to provide a new perspective on our understanding of the impact of global warming on the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice covers, and the numerous feedback loops involved in controlling the climate at larger scale.

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New Horizon 2020 project advances our understanding of polar processes in the global climate system

Published on May 21, 2021

https://ige-intranet.osug.fr/spip.p...
The CRiceS project, or Climate relevant interactions and feedbacks : the key role of sea ice and snow in the polar and global climate system, will contribute to a more precise understanding of the ocean-ice-snow-atmosphere system to deliver improved models that describe polar and global climate.
This project is coordinated by Risto Makkonen (Finnish Meteorological Institute).
Jennie Thomas (IGE-CNRS) is the scientific coordinator of the project. (...)

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Limit global warming to 1.5°C and halve the land ice contribution to sea level this century

Published on May 06, 2021

We can halve the contribution of land ice to sea level rise this century, if we increase the ambition of our emissions commitments sufficiently to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement
The latest Special Report on Ocean and Cryosphere Change in a Changing Climate (SROCC) prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2019 projects a global average surface atmospheric warming in 2100 of between 1°C and more than 4°C relative to the period 1986-2005 depending on the (...)

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Journal of Theoretical, Computational and Applied Mechanics : first overlay journal in mechanics

Published on March 31, 2021

The first article of the diamond open access journal JTCAM has just been published !
Doitrand, A., Henry, R. & Meille, S. Brittle material strength and fracture toughness estimation from four-point bending test, Journal of Theoretical, Computational and Applied Mechanics, Mar 2021. DOI : 10.46298/jtcam.6753.
What is JTCAM ? It is the first overlay journal of mechanics, i.e. free for authors AND readers.
It was created by a group of researchers, including Maurine Montagnat from the (...)

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Sea level science - first PROTECT video

Published on February 24, 2021

Sea level has been going up and down in the last millennia and while moving a camp wasn’t a big deal for our ancestors, moving today Venice or New-York is a different story. Sea level is currently rising at an accelerated rate due to the melt of land-based ice : glaciers, the Greenland and the Antarctic ice sheet. How high is the sea level going to be in 10 years, 50 years, 80 years, 500 years ? How do we calculate how much the seas are going to rise ?
You can read more about PROTECT. (...)

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Floods in Africa : a new hydroclimatic era

Published on December 03, 2020

The entire Sahelian region was affected by unusually high flooding, from the Atlantic coast to Ethiopia and Somalia. What happened this summer, particularly in the middle Niger River, has all the characteristics of an entry into a new hydroclimatic era," explains T. Lebel, G. Panthou, T. Vischel and A. Lebel. Ali in an article published on 24/11/2020 in "The conversation".
The researchers present the strong regional trends and more circumstantial factors that played a significant role in (...)

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Greenland glaciers and sea level

Published on November 19, 2020
Brief published by CNRS-INSU - November 18, 2020

The three Greenlandic glaciers Jakobshavn Isbræ, Kangerlussuaq and Helheim are the largest contributors to the loss of mass in Greenland. However, they alone contain enough ice to raise the global sea level by 1.3 m if they were to disappear completely.

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Air pollution : a new indicator to measure health impact

Published on November 19, 2020
IRD Press Release - November 18, 2020

Researchers from IRD, CNRS and UGA participated in a European study on sources of fine particles harmful to health, coordinated by the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI, Switzerland). Their results, published in the journal Nature on November 18, 2020, reveal the harmful nature of fine particles in the atmosphere through their oxidizing potential. They suggest that this indicator should be taken into account in the future in air quality control measures for the health of people around the world. (...)

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