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The massive crack running through Antarctica’s fourth-largest ice shelf dramatically accelerated its growth last month, extending over 11 miles in just six days. According to the UK-based Project Midas research group, the 110 kilometer (68 mile) long chasm extended an additional 17 km (11 miles) between May 25 and May 31.

The crack’s course has also suddenly turned seaward, with only 13 km (8 miles) remaining before the ice front calves off. Provided the ice front stays intact after calving, the resulting iceberg would account for more than ten percent of Larsen C’s area, a 5,000 square kilometer (1,150 sq mi) island of ice 350 meters (1,150 feet) thick, approximately the size of the state of Delaware. A berg that size would be one of the largest on record.
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President Donald J. Trump has announced that the United States will withdraw from the Paris Agreement, the accord forged by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2015, with its 195 signatory countries pledging to cut carbon emissions in a effort to limit global warming to no more than 2ºC above pre-industrial levels. Trump says that he plans to halt payments into the Green Climate Fund, and re-negotiate the United States’ place in the agreement, claiming that the deal, as it stands, was specifically made to disadvantage the American economy.
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A new study has been published that has found that the rate of sea level rise is much worse than previously thought, having tripled in pace since 1990. Before 1990, the oceans were rising at an average rate of 11 millimeters (0.43 inches) per decade, but between 1993 and 2012, that rate increased to 31 millimeters (1.22 inches) per decade.

"We have a much stronger acceleration in sea level rise than formerly thought," explains study lead Sönke Dangendorf, with Germany’s University of Siegen. "The sea level rise is now three times as fast as before 1990."
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The Officials in charge of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault have reported that water from melting permafrost and heavy rain, brought about by record-high temperatures in the Arctic over the past winter, has leaked into the entrance tunnel leading to the underground stronghold. The water subsequently froze on the floor of the tunnel, prompting the vault’s caretakers to chip the ice away from the tunnel floor.
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