ice field

They monitored floods, measured continental and ocean-surface temperatures, traced the movement of ice fields, and sensed the ground buckle during earthquakes.

They warn it may now be too late to save many of the alpine ice fields, even if climate targets are met.

Higgins believed the Trinidad’s hull was damaged a few days before the sinking as it passed through ice fields in the Straits of Mackinac.

But the alpine ice fields are especially sensitive to global warming.

In Alaska, researchers estimate algae accounts for almost one-fifth of the annual melt across a large ice field.