Antarctica is experiencing shattered temperature records and an increase in the size and number of extreme weather events, according to a new paper in Frontiers in Environmental Science. The southernmost continent is not isolated from the extreme weather associated with human-caused climate change, as its western end and peninsula have seen dramatic ice sheet melt that threatens massive sea level rises over the next few centuries.
One western glacier is melting so fast that scientists have nicknamed it the Doomsday Glacier and there’s an international effort trying to figure out what’s happening to it. Antarctic sea ice has veered from record high to shocking amounts far lower than ever seen. If the trend continues, a likely result if humans fail to curb emissions will be a cascade of consequences from disappearing coastlines to increased global warming hastened by dramatic losses of a major source of sunlight-reflecting ice.
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A changing Antarctica is bad news for our planet, as it feels climate change’s wrath “sporadically and unpredictably.” The study found climate change extremes are getting worse in a place that once seemed slightly shielded from global warming’s wildness. The continent “is not a static giant frozen in time,” they said, but instead feels climate change’s wrath and extremes “sporadically and unpredictably.”
The study looked at several factors including heat waves, loss of sea ice, collapse of ice shelves, and impacts on biodiversity. The topic of extremes “is with us more frequently and will be with us even more frequently in the future,” said Peter Schlosser, vice president and vice provost of the Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University. Systems like Antarctica are extreme by nature, but they are highly susceptible to small changes.
Source: nbc.com
