Antarctica facing climate extreme, no quick fix to reverse dangerous changes
Last year, an "atmospheric river" originating from Australia drove subtropical heat and moisture into the continent, causing unprecedented temperatures up to 38.5 Celsius above normal.
In Short
- This year, it further declined to a new low in February.
- The current year's sea ice minimum is 20% lower
- The study is published in Frontiers in Environmental Science
Scientists have warned that the Antarctic region's sea ice has reached an all-time low due to escalating global temperatures.
The minimum summer ice cover of the continent plummeted below 2 million square kilometers for the first time since satellite monitoring began in 1978. This year, it further declined to a new low in February.
Caroline Holmes, a polar climate scientist at the British Antarctic Survey and one of the study's co-authors, stated that it would take decades, if not centuries, for the ice to recover. "There's no quick fix to replacing this ice," she said during a press briefing.
Its western end and especially its peninsula have seen dramatic ice sheet melt that threatens massive sea level rises over the next few centuries, while the eastern side has at times gained ice.
The current year's sea ice minimum is 20% lower than the average over the past 40 years, equivalent to a sea ice loss nearly ten times the area of New Zealand, according to Tim Naish, director of the Antarctic Research Centre at Australia's Victoria University of Wellington.
The study, published in Frontiers in Environmental Science, warns that global warming, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, has made Antarctica more susceptible to extreme events. It predicts an increase in the size and frequency of heatwaves, ice shelf collapses, and declines in sea ice.
Last year, an "atmospheric river" originating from Australia drove subtropical heat and moisture into the continent, causing unprecedented temperatures up to 38.5 Celsius above normal.
Martin Siegert, a glaciologist at the University of Exeter and another co-author of the study, described the temperature increase as "absolutely astonishing."
Scientists are deeply concerned about the increasing intensity and frequency of extreme events and their cascading influences on other areas. "Antarctica is fragile as an environment, but extreme events test that fragility," Siegert said.
What follows 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.
