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During the second half of the 20th century, the Antarctic Peninsula region has undergone a long and sustained warming period, followed by a shorter but also sustained cooling period, and then a very recent return to warming conditions. All of these have profoundly impacted the glaciers peripheral to the Antarctic Peninsula. This paper focuses on the analysis of the surface mass balance monitoring of such glaciers by the glaciological method, complemented by the analysis of mass-balance estimates by geodetic methods, as well as frontal ablation estimates. We aim to summarize the current knowledge and outline the main challenges faced by investigating the mass balance of such peripheral glaciers and their current contribution to sea-level rise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mountain glaciers are crucial sources of fresh water, contributing directly and indirectly to water, energy and food supplies for hundreds of millions of people. Assessing the impact of diminishing glacial meltwater contributions to the security of this resource is critical as we seek to manage and adapt to changing freshwater dynamics in a warming world. Both water quantity and quality influence water (in)security, so understanding the fluxes of water, sediment and contaminants through glacial and proglacial systems is required for holistic assessment of meltwater contribution to downstream resource security. In this paper we consider the socio-environmental role of and pressures on glacier-fed waters, discuss key research priorities for the assessment of both the quantity and quality of meltwater and reflect on the importance of situating our understanding within a transdisciplinary and inclusive research landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cryospheric change occurs in unequal spaces. Societies living near ice are divided by race, class, gender, geography, politics and other factors. Consequently, impacts of ice loss are not shared equally, and everyone experiences cryospheric changes differently. Responsibility for recent ice loss is also driven by a relatively small portion of humanity: those who emit the most greenhouse gases. Additionally, people who study the cryosphere come from institutions and societies where inequality is often systemic, making research on ice and snow a symptom of and contributor to social inequality. To better understand unequal effects of cryospheric change within and across diverse communities, including research communities, this paper focuses on three areas, drawing primarily from glacier-related work: (1) the social context of cryospheric changes; (2) attribution and responsibility for cryospheric changes and (3) imbalances in knowledge about the cryosphere. Addressing these dimensions of ice loss requires transdisciplinary approaches that connect research to societies and link glaciology and other cryospheric sciences with social sciences and humanities. These concepts, cases and suggestions to help address inequalities also reveal that no singular conceptualization of sustainability exists. Different societies, residents and researchers possess distinct understandings of and goals for 'ice in a sustainable society'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Upper Palaeolithic archaeological sites in the Basque Country have been excavated for over a century. They have yielded a rich palaeoenvironmental record with zoological and botanical remains that have been obtained in stratigraphic series dated precisely by radiocarbon. This information reveals cyclical environmental changes from climates similar to today to drier and extremely cold conditions, when species in current boreal biomes and others now extinct but with similar ecological preferences were present in the region. Moreover, the archaeological sites have provided high-resolution information about the resilience mechanisms of the communities of our own human species. This information allows us to increase the corpus of palaeoclimate data regarding the Marine Isotopic Stage (MIS) 2 and MIS 3 for a critical region within the human population of Eurasia. The aim of this paper is to show how an extraordinary capacity for adaptation to drastic climate changes Upper Palaeolithic hunter–gatherer societies displayed, even though their subsistence depended on biotic resources that alter rapidly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the second half of the 20th century, the Antarctic Peninsula region has undergone a long and sustained warming period, followed by a shorter but also sustained cooling period, and then a very recent return to warming conditions. All of these have profoundly impacted the glaciers peripheral to the Antarctic Peninsula. This paper focuses on the analysis of the surface mass balance monitoring of such glaciers by the glaciological method, complemented by the analysis of mass-balance estimates by geodetic methods, as well as frontal ablation estimates. We aim to summarize the current knowledge and outline the main challenges faced by investigating the mass balance of such peripheral glaciers and their current contribution to sea-level rise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mountain glaciers are crucial sources of fresh water, contributing directly and indirectly to water, energy and food supplies for hundreds of millions of people. Assessing the impact of diminishing glacial meltwater contributions to the security of this resource is critical as we seek to manage and adapt to changing freshwater dynamics in a warming world. Both water quantity and quality influence water (in)security, so understanding the fluxes of water, sediment and contaminants through glacial and proglacial systems is required for holistic assessment of meltwater contribution to downstream resource security. In this paper we consider the socio-environmental role of and pressures on glacier-fed waters, discuss key research priorities for the assessment of both the quantity and quality of meltwater and reflect on the importance of situating our understanding within a transdisciplinary and inclusive research landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]