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“The effects will be global, because sea level will rise globally.”, Photograph by Jeff Schmaltz, NASA/GSFC/MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, West Antarctica is melting—and it’s our fault, See the crack splitting an Antarctic ice shelf in two. The Ross Sea, an area that is expected to warm more slowly than the rest of the Antarctic, is a particularly important area for focus. Adélie penguin populations have been declining in recent years due to reductions in krill populations and changing weather conditions in their traditional nesting areas. Pine Island Glacier and Thwaites Glaciers, for example, are losing about 100 billion tons of ice each year, and more in bad years. Antarctic species are dramatically impacted by climate as well.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/08/west-antarctic-glaciers-melting-human-influence.html, See what a 10 billion ton chunk of ice looks like in this video, See what the world would look like if all the ice melted away. [11], Researchers reported on December 21, 2012 in Nature Geoscience that from 1958 to 2010, the average temperature at the mile-high Byrd Station rose by 2.4 degrees Celsius, with warming fastest in its winter and spring. But the patterns in this region match up nearly perfectly with conditions far away, in the tropical Pacific Ocean, where much better, longer-term records exist—so the team could extrapolate how the polar-region winds have changed over the last century. But Antarctica is a complicated place that changes a lot because of natural variability, so it has been challenging to pinpoint the extent of human influence on the changes.

If it all melted away, global sea levels would rise by about 10 feet or more. There is no evidence for a decline in the overall Antarctic sea ice extent. Designation of marine protected areas: Protecting large areas from fishing and pollution will provide refuges for vulnerable species whose habitat may be changing dramatically. Antarctica comprises two geologically distinct regions, East Antarctica and West Antarctica, separated by the great Trans-Antarctic Mountains but joined together by the all-encompassing ice sheet. Furthermore, a 2008 study has additionally identified Antarctic toothfish as highly vulnerable to climate change. Pine Island Glacier, in West Antarctica, is retreating quickly.

Activities related to climate change should take place in four areas: Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions: Widespread deployment of energy efficiency and renewable energy systems at all Antarctic stations, coordination of transport and logistics strategic planning about new facilities (necessity, location and design) can bring about regional and global environmental benefits as well as cost savings. Promotion of globally important climate science: ASOC acknowledges and supports the world-class climate research conducted by Antarctic researchers. But over the last century, that balance has come undone. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. Research published in 2009 found that overall the continent had become warmer since the 1950s, a finding consistent with the influence of man-made climate change: The British Antarctic Survey, which has undertaken the majority of Britain's scientific research in the area, had the following positions in 2006:[8], The area of strongest cooling appears at the South Pole, and the region of strongest warming lies along the Antarctic Peninsula. [12][13][14], A study of the Antarctic Peninsula, a small subregion of Lesser Antarctica, published in 2017 found that the temperature trends at the northern tip of the Peninsula, the north-east region of the Peninsula, and the South Shetland Islands "shifted from a warming trend of 0.32 °C/decade during 1979–1997 to a cooling trend of -0.47 °C/decade during 1999–2014" but that this variation was absent from the south-west region of the Peninsula. A possible explanation is that loss of UV-absorbing ozone may have cooled the stratosphere and strengthened the polar vortex, a pattern of spinning winds around the South Pole. In 2014, this iceberg, 20 miles wide, broke off the tongue of the glacier and floated away. The massive West Antarctic ice sheet holds something like 6 percent of the world’s fresh water frozen in its guts. PUBLISHED August 12, 2019. ASOC works to raise the profile of Antarctic climate change issues through public advocacy, attending Antarctic governance meetings, and conducting outreach to governments. [10], There is also evidence for widespread glacier retreat around the Antarctic Peninsula. We support the continued timely dissemination of these findings to policy makers and the world population in general. In the past decades, some glaciers in the region have been retreating shockingly quickly. Emperor penguins are highly vulnerable as well and are predicted to suffer when the world's average temperature increases by 2 degrees Celsius. Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions: Widespread deployment of energy efficiency and renewable energy systems at all Antarctic stations, coordination of transport and logistics strategic planning about new facilities (necessity, location and design) can bring about regional and global environmental benefits as well as cost savings. The amount of snow deposited annually on the ice sheet is equivalent to about 5 mm of global sea level, as is the mean annual discharge of ice back into the ocean. IPCC 2007, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. When I asked people what the Antarctic makes them think of, ‘climate change’ was one of the most common answers around the world. This effect is restricted to the 1980s and 1990s.[3][4][5]. But about a century ago, pieces of it started to retreat in measurable ways. “[West Antarctic Ice Sheet] melting will affect everyone,” says Steig. Implementation of climate adaptation strategies: Strategies for reducing the vulnerability of climate sensitive ecosystems and organisms will be increasingly important as the rapid changes underway may exceed the natural abilities of many Antarctic organisms to cope. All Rights Reserved. No more. The greatest threat to the inhabited world comes from the West Antarctic ice sheet (WAIS), which rests on a bed far below sea level and so may have the potential for rapid shrinkage. But while the science was clear that human influences on climate would affect the ice down the line, it has been hard to tell whether human-driven global warming has affected the melting already underway. How much will sea levels rise? Sometimes, those winds have weakened or reversed, which in turn causes changes in the ocean water that laps up against the ice in a way that caused the glaciers to melt. However, since Antarctica is a big place, climate change is not having a uniform impact, with some areas experiencing increases in sea ice extent. Given that Antarctica is one of the regions of the world where the impacts of climate change are most apparent and pronounced, Antarctic Treaty Parties should lead by example in the global effort in addressing climate change. “If we carry this pattern forward, we may move to a situation where we’re flipping between warm and very warm,” says Holland. But now, because of the slow warming of the planet, the whole baseline has moved up. The towering glaciers of West Antarctica hold the fate of the world’s coasts in their flanks. For years, scientists have watched and learned that those glaciers are crumbling and melting, the rate speeding up over the decades and imperiling the stability of the entire ice sheet. Author: NAS. The presence of the high ice sheet and the polar location make Antarctica a powerful heat sink that strongly affects the climate of the whole Earth. Strategies to increase the resilience of ecosystems include: establishing a representative network of marine protected areas, protecting areas which are less likely to change (refugia), such as the Ross Sea; implementing appropriate biosecurity measures; putting into place adaptive management systems which are able to incorporate uncertainty and to respond to new information, for example through the expansion and improvement of CCAMLR’s Ecosystem Monitoring Program (CEMP) and the establishment of a Southern Ocean Sentinel program. Author: Robert Simmon, NASA Earth Observatory. This is somewhat offset by cooling in East Antarctica during the fall. The Antarctic ice sheet sat more or less stable in shape and size for many thousands of years. From this warming 0.8°C is due to natural cycles that can cause after similar cooling, but 1.0°C is from Climate Change.[18]. [1], In their latest study (September 20, 2007) NASA researchers have confirmed that Antarctic snow is melting farther inland from the coast over time, melting at higher altitudes than ever and increasingly melting on Antarctica's largest ice shelf. The central and southern parts of the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula have warmed by about 2.4 °C. Antarctica is losing ice at an accelerating rate. “We now have evidence to support that human activities have influenced the sea level rise we’ve seen from West Antarctica,” says lead author Paul Holland, a polar scientist at the British Antarctic Survey. The continent-wide average surface temperature trend of Antarctica is positive – that is, the temperature is increasing – and significant at more than 0.05 °C (0.09 °F) per decade since 1957. Thus, a modest imbalance between the input and output of ice might be a major contributor to the present-day rise in sea level (1.5–2 mm per year), but the uncertainty is large. Those glaciers are particularly sensitive to melting at their snouts. The overall loss has substantially accelerated since the 2012 IMBIE assessment: an average loss of 43 gigatons per year during the first ten years, 1992 to 2002, rose to an average of 220 gigatons per year in the last 5 years. Sometimes, those winds—cousins of the famous raging band of Southern Ocean winds known as the Roaring 40s—slacken or even reverse.

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