The Klinaklini Glacier is the largest glacier in western North America outside...

NASA Climate Change 2 years ago

The Klinaklini Glacier is the largest glacier in western North America outside of Alaska, but it is shrinking. These two #Landsat images from Sept. 26, 1984 and Sept. 22, 2023 show how the glacier retreated northward more than 3 miles (5 kilometers). It is also getting skinnier. The ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) on NASA”s Terra satellite shows that klinaklini’s main stem thinned by over 650 feet (nearly 200 meters) between 2000 and 2019. And it’s not alone. Decades of satellite images of western Canada make it clear that the region’s glaciers are shrinking and that the rate of ice loss is accelerating. Scientific analysis found that rising temperatures and increases in rainfall, rather than snowfall, in the area are fueling the ice losses. This is a trend that is being seen across the planet. According to one recent estimate, glaciers, excluding the ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica, lost an average of 267 gigatons of mass per year between 2000 and 2019, equivalent to 21 percent of the observed sea level rise during that period. Video Description: Alternates between two satellite views of Klinaklini Glacier 39 years apart. The first image shows white snow and ice covered areas that look like branches on the left side of the image. In the middle of the image are lines of dark gray and white that create a slow wave. This is the Klinaklini Glacier. At the top of the image is an area where two of this ice rivers meet, like a zipper. At the bottom of the image, the glacier line fades into a dark green. On the right side of the image, it is primarily shades of green uneven terrain. There is a bit of ice and snow covered areas closer to the glacier. In the second image, the look is similar, except most of the snow and ice covered areas now show a light gray and brown rocky terrain as it melted away. The glacier now only goes to the middle of the image before it changes to a light green color labeled as the glacial lake. There are also small white dots in the lake that are icebergs. #NASA #ClimateChange #Earth #EarthFromSpace

layersDaily Sustainability Digest

Published about 7 minutes ago



Policymakers and industry leaders continue to accelerate the shift toward sustainable construction, setting new benchmarks for environmental sustainability in construction and deepening commitments to decarbonising the built environment. The UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has given the Environment Agency expanded authority to streamline project permitting, aiming to embed life cycle thinking in construction more efficiently into planning and reduce administrative bottlenecks. The reforms are intended to cut red tape for low-risk activities while still supporting resource efficiency in construction, although environmental advocates remain cautious about risks of diminished oversight.

Materials innovation is taking centre stage in the global effort to reduce the carbon footprint of construction. Kingspan’s new green steel partnership across the Asia-Pacific region marks a strategic advance in addressing embodied carbon in materials. By shifting to low-carbon steel options, the company strengthens its alignment with whole life carbon assessment principles and contributes to the creation of low embodied carbon materials. Such initiatives reduce both the embodied and operational carbon of structures, highlighting a practical application of eco-design for buildings and signalling tangible progress toward net zero whole life carbon targets.

Holcim is expanding the boundaries of sustainable building practices by introducing electric mobility across its logistics network and prioritising sustainable material specification. The company’s broader sustainability roadmap integrates circular construction strategies and aims to drive progress towards carbon neutral construction. The transition to electric fleets, coupled with responsible sourcing and life cycle cost evaluations, exemplifies a systemic approach to reducing emissions throughout the building lifecycle performance, rather than focusing on individual project achievements alone.

An increasing emphasis on green skills and education underscores that sustainable urban development depends as much on people as on technology. National Grid’s outreach programmes have introduced nearly 150,000 students to the principles of sustainable building design and low carbon construction materials, helping to build capacity for the next generation of engineers, architects, and environmental specialists. This investment in long-term knowledge ensures that lifecycle assessment and whole life carbon methodologies become integral to professional practice rather than theoretical aspirations.

Stonewater’s completion of its 8,000th energy-efficient home since 2015 demonstrates the scalability of eco-friendly construction and affordability in sustainable housing. The project integrates green building materials, renewable building materials, and design standards consistent with BREEAM and BREEAM v7 assessments. The housing association’s achievement reflects the growing capability to combine low carbon design, sustainable architecture, and circular economy in construction principles within social housing models, advancing the UK’s ambition for net zero carbon buildings.

These developments collectively point to a maturing construction ecosystem grounded in measurable outcomes and transparent reporting through environmental product declarations (EPDs). Whether through green construction innovation, end-of-life reuse in construction, or continuous carbon footprint reduction, the sector is aligning itself toward a future where whole life carbon accountability and sustainable design steer every stage of the built environment’s evolution.

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