Antarctica is rapidly changing. Its consequences can be serious
This story originally Appeared in the GRT and is part of the cooperation of the weather desk.
From space, the Antarctica looks much easier than other continents – a large sheet of ice that is surrounded by the dark waters of the South Ocean. However, get closer, and you will not find a simple hat for frozen water, but it is an extremely complex interaction between the ocean, sea ice and sheets and shelves.
This relationship is at serious risk. A new article in the Journal of Nature, how several “sudden changes”, such as the loss of sea ice deposition over the past decade, reveals to Antarctica and its surrounding waters, threatening to send a continent to the past, and because the coastal sea goes everywhere, it sends the seas.
“We are seeing a wide range of surprising and surprising changes throughout Antarctica, but these things are not in isolation,” said Nariley Abram. “(He conducted the study at the Australian National University but is now a senior scientist in South Antarctica.)” When we change part of the system, it has a beatings that change other parts of the system. And we talk about changes that have worldwide consequences. “
Scientists change sudden change as a little of the environment that changes much faster than expected. In Antarctica this can occur on different scales, of days or weeks to collapse of the ice shelf, and centuries and beyond for ice sheets. Unfortunately, these sudden changes can be tolerated and stopped because humans continue to warm up. “These are the options we are doing right now, and this decade and the other for the emissions of greenhouse gases that fulfill these commitments for long -term change,” Abram said.
The main driver of the Antarctic waterfall crises is the loss of floating sea ice that forms during the winter. In 2014, the peak peaked (at least since satellite observations in 1978) around Antarctica 20.11 million square kilometers or 7.76 million square miles. But since then, sea ice coverage has not only declined in an incredible way, but has been down with 75 miles near the beach. During the winter, when sea ice reaches its maximum cover, 4.4 times faster than the Antarctica has declined than in the North Pole over the past decade.
In other words, the loss of winter sea ice in Antarctica has just been lost in the past decade similar to what the Arctic has lost in the past 46 years. “People always thought that Antarctica would not change compared to the North Pole, and I think we are now seeing signs that are no longer,” said Ryan Fuget, who is studying at Antarctic at the University of Ohio. “We see as fast and in many cases faster than Antarctica than the North Pole.”
While scientists need to collect more data to determine whether this is the beginning of a major change in Antarctica, the signals are heinous. “We are starting to see parts of the image that we are very well in this new state of the remarkable destruction of the Antarctic Ice,” said Zachary M. Labe
