The Kennet Geog Blog

  The melting of one of North America’s largest icefields has accelerated and could soon reach an irreversible tipping point. That’s the conclusion of  new research  colleagues and I have published on the Juneau Icefield, which straddles the Alaska-Canada border near the Alaskan capital of Juneau. In the summer of 2022, I skied across the flat, smooth and white plateau of the icefield, accompanied by  other researchers , sliding in the tracks of the person in front of me under a hot sun. From that plateau, around 40 huge, interconnected glaciers descend towards the sea, with hundreds of smaller glaciers on the mountain peaks all around. Read the full article  here!

  Carbon   catch-22 : the pollution in our soil Bad behaviour doesn’t usually have good consequences but our fossil fuel and fertiliser habits may have had some “good” environmental side-effects.  Our new research  suggests that the last 200 years of pollution have increased the carbon stored in soils across natural ecosystems in Britain. And this locking in of carbon in soils provides an offset for some of our carbon emissions. But the catch-22 is if we kick our polluting habits, this carbon is at risk of returning to our atmosphere, contributing to climate change. Read the rest of the article  here!

 Looking for a quick yet detailed overview of the water and carbon cycles? Look no more! A fantastic resource provided by the RGS to support your studies. It can be accessed  here!

  Getting to net zero emissions by mid-century is conventionally understood as humanity’s best hope for keeping Earth’s surface temperature (already 1.2°C above its pre-industrial level) from increasing well beyond 1.5°C – potentially reaching a point at which it could cause widespread societal breakdown. At least one prominent climate scientist, however, disagrees. James Hansen of Columbia University in the US published  a paper  with colleagues in November which claims temperatures are set to rise further and faster than the predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  In his view , the 1.5°C target is dead. He also claims net zero is no longer sufficient to prevent warming of more than 2°C. To regain some control over Earth’s rising temperature, Hansen supports accelerating the retirement of fossil fuels, greater cooperation between major polluters that accommodates the needs of the developing world and, controversially, intervening in Ear...

As the gavel came down on the latest round of climate talks in Dubai, there were declarations of “we united, we acted, we delivered” from the COP28 presidency. This was met by a sense of   déjà vu   among delegates of the Alliance of Small Island States ( Aosis ), an intergovernmental organisation representing the nations most vulnerable to climate change. In her post-summit  statement , Aosis lead negotiator Anne Rasmussen expressed confusion that the  UAE Consensus , COP28’s final agreement, was approved when representatives from small-island developing states (or  Sids  were not in the room. While some delegates hailed the  consensus  as “ beginning of the end ” of the fossil fuel era, Aosis countered that the document contained a “litany of loopholes” which did little to advance the key actions needed to stave off climate breakdown and deliver justice to islands and low-lying states facing the gravest consequences of the climate crisis. Read t...

  The Global Cooling Watch report demonstrates the potential and the pathways to achieve near-zero emissions from cooling. Using a model created specifically for this report, it presents pathways to get to near-zero emissions in the key cooling sectors and provides a call to action for countries to pursue the policies and strategies that have the greatest impact in reducing cooling-related emissions and advancing sustainable cooling for all. Read the full report  here!

 Video's more your thing? The Viking Geo has a wide array of fantastic videos to support your learning, browse through the channels playlists to find the units that fit our course.  The channel can be found  here.

  The world is falling behind on commitments to protect and restore forests, according to the recent  Forest Declaration Assessment . There is no serious pathway to fixing climate change while forest losses continue at current rates, because global climate targets, sustainable development goals and forest commitments depend on each other. Read more  here! Read the forest pathways report  here!