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"A NASA science team has observed "amazing and potentially troubling" levels of methane and CO2 from the rapidly warming Arctic. Given the staggering amount of carbon trapped in the permafrost - and the fact that methane is a very potent heat-trapping gas - the space agency is now asking: "Is a Sleeping Climate Giant Stirring in the Arctic?""

"The Arctic's sea ice melted at a record pace in 2012, the ninth-hottest year on record, compounding concerns about climate change underscored by extreme weather such as Hurricane Sandy, the UN weather agency says."

"Climate change has reduced ice in the Arctic to record lows in the past year, forcing animals to range further in search of food"

"Ice Loss in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago"

"Arctic Ozone Loss"

"Methane released by melting permafrost will have global impacts that must be better modelled, say Gail Whiteman, Chris Hope and Peter Wadhams."

"The fact that the business-as-usual pursuit of profits and growth is destabilising life on earth is no longer something we need to read about in scientific journals. The early signs are unfolding before our eyes. And increasing numbers of us are responding accordingly: blockading fracking activity in Balcombe; interfering with Arctic drilling preparations in Russian waters (at tremendous personal cost); taking tar sands operators to court for violating indigenous sovereignty; and countless other acts of resistance large and small. In Brad Werner's computer model, this is the "friction" needed to slow down the forces of destabilisation; the great climate campaigner Bill McKibben calls it the "antibodies" rising up to fight the planet's "spiking fever"."

"Recently NASA reported that this year's maximum wintertime extent of Antarctic sea ice was the largest on record, even greater than the previous year's record. This is understandably at odds with the public's perception of how polar ice should respond to a warming climate, given the dramatic headlines of severe decline in Arctic summertime extent. But the "paradox of Antarctic sea ice" has been on climate scientists' minds for some time."

"Upwards of 5 billion people in the tropics will soon find temperature and other weather conditions falling outside anything experienced in modern record-keeping, according to a groundbreaking study published Wednesday. What's past is no longer prologue. We are outside of our experience. The study, by a team of University of Hawaii researchers led by professor Camilo Mora, is the first to map the timing of "climate departures" - when a particular region's climate conditions escape the bounds recorded over the past 140-odd years by modern instruments. Among the team's surprising findings: The tropics will depart first, even though all climate models and data show the Arctic is warming fastest. And the transformation, underway now, will happen very quickly."