Even frozen Antarctica is being walloped by climate extremes, scientists find
A new study concludes that Antarctica is already being and will continue to be affected by more frequent and severe extreme weather events, a known byproduct of human-caused climate change
Even in Antarctica — one of the most remote and desolate places on Earth — scientists say they are finding shattered temperature records and an increase in the size and number of wacky weather events.
The southernmost continent is not isolated from the extreme weather associated with human-caused climate change, according to a new paper in Frontiers in Environmental Science that tries to make a coherent picture of a place that has been a climate change oddball. 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. 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. And Antarctic sea ice veered from record high to shocking amounts far lower than ever seen.
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. That's something scientists have long been watching and are even more concerned about now.
“A changing Antarctica is bad news for our planet,” said Martin Siegert, a glaciologist, professor of geosciences at University of Exeter and lead author on the paper.
