Tag Archives: antarctica

New study: Antarctica’s tipping point is closer than we thought.

by Isaiah McKenna Posted on October 24, 2019

Antarctic ice sheets have been melting rapidly for hundreds of years, much longer than scientists previously thought, according to a study out Thursday. The findings suggest that estimates for global sea-level rise need to be reworked and that we’re even closer to the day that fish start chasing each other through New York City’s subway tunnels.

The scientists behind the new study in Scientific Reports were able to reconstruct a 6,250-year record of how fast Antarctic glaciers slipped into the sea. They did this by drilling the bottom of the Southern Ocean between Antarctica and Tierra del Fuego and analyzing the layers of mud they pulled up.

The story this mud tells between 4300 B.C. and 300 A.D. is uneventful. But around 1400, the skeletons of diatoms — ubiquitous, jewel-like sea creatures often used for dating ocean sediments — suggest that the weather became warmer. More oxygen isotopes that come from fresh (as opposed to saltwater) started showing up, meaning the glaciers were melting. Then around 1706, the ice began to melt even faster than before.

So natural climate change had cued up the massive Antarctic ice shelves to collapse before human-caused climate change turned up the heat. A random shift in wind patterns has been melting the ice caps for the last 300 years, the scientists wrote, “potentially predisposing them to collapse under intensified anthropogenic warming.”

The more glaciers melt, the more quickly they slide into the ocean. The more quickly ice that was previously suspended above the ocean slips into the water, the more quickly oceans rise and eels get into subway tunnels. This new paper didn’t lay out any new estimates for future sea level rise. But the implication is obvious. A previous study suggested that Antarctic melting alone would raise sea levels by the end of the century as much as 2.25 feet if temperatures increase by 4.5 degrees Celsius. Add that to ice melt from the northern ice caps and high tides are on track to be at least 3 feet higher worldwide by the end of the century, and maybe higher. This new finding suggests that might all happen sooner than later.

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New study: Antarctica’s tipping point is closer than we thought.

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Here’s why Iceland is mourning a dead glacier

by KermitBuilder Posted on August 19, 2019

Some 100 people gathered at the top of a volcano in Iceland on Sunday for an unusual funeral. The victim: A 700-year-old, six-mile glacier. Cause of death: climate change.

The Okjokull glacier actually died a decade ago. But Iceland decided to hold the funeral for the deceased ice mass — it’s first to go extinct from rising temperatures — last weekend amid warnings from the scientific community that hundreds of other glaciers across the sub-Arctic country could soon disappear. Iceland is projected to be entirely glacier-free within 200 years.

A plaque at the site of the vanished glacier, installed with a drill and assistance from some of the children in attendance, reads: “This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it.” Henceforth the glacier will be known as just “Ok”; the Icelandic word for glacier, “jokull,” no longer applies.

An ice-free Iceland represents more than just an identity crisis for Icelanders. If global leaders don’t take action to slow rising temperatures, the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet alone could raise sea-levels more than five feet in the next 200 years. Enormous quantities of methane slumbering in the Arctic permafrost are threatening to come alive as record temperatures fry the top of our planet. Two fast-melting glaciers in Antarctica are holding back enough sea ice to flood oceans with another 11 feet of water.

The symbolic funeral took place three days before a meeting in Reykjavik between Iceland’s prime minister, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, other Nordic leaders, and Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel. Jakobsdóttir said she aims to make addressing the climate crisis a priority at that meeting. “We see the consequences of the climate crisis,” she told the group of mourners. “We have no time to lose.”

Iceland may be the first country to hold a funeral for a dead glacier, but it’s not the first to mourn a natural wonder under assault by global warming. Australia is grappling with the slow death of its Great Barrier Reef, three islands have disappeared into the rising sea in the past year, and the United States is on the cusp of losing many of its cultural sites, like Jamestown, to rising tides.

And the death count is bound to rise as we make our way deeper into this century. Are we prepared to hold a funeral for, say, Miami? By 2070, the city’s streets will flood every single day (whether South Beach real estate agents realize it or not). If world leaders can’t get rampant emissions under control, we’d all better start getting used to living in a world that is just “Ok.”

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Here’s why Iceland is mourning a dead glacier

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Empire Antarctica – Gavin Francis

by Myrna Posted on January 31, 2019

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

Empire Antarctica

Ice, Silence & Emperor Penguins

Gavin Francis

Genre: Nature

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: September 16, 2013

Publisher: Counterpoint Press

Seller: OpenRoad Integrated Media, LLC


“It is difficult to read this engaging memoir without a smile on one’s face . . . moments of sheer joy . . . [a] mesmerizing and memorable book.” — The Economist   Chosen as a Book of the Year by the Scotsman , the Financial Times , and the Sunday Herald Gavin Francis fulfilled a lifetime’s ambition when he spent fourteen months as the basecamp doctor at Halley, a profoundly isolated British research station on the Caird Coast of Antarctica—so remote that it is said to be easier to evacuate a casualty from the International Space Station than it is to bring someone out of Halley in winter.   Antarctica offered a year of unparalleled silence and solitude, with few distractions and a rare opportunity to live among emperor penguins, the only species truly at home in the Antarctic. Following penguins throughout the year—from a summer of perpetual sunshine to months of winter darkness—Francis explores the world of great beauty conjured from the simplest of elements, the hardship of below-zero temperatures and the unexpected comfort that the penguin community brings. Empire Antarctica is the story of one man’s fascination with the world’s loneliest continent, and the emperor penguins who weather the winter with him.   Includes maps and illustrations   “Part travelogue, part memoir, part natural history book, a fascinating, lyrical account of one of the strangest places on earth and its majestic inhabitants.” — Esquire   “Highly readable, enjoyable . . . the author writes vividly of auroras, clouds, stars, sunlight, darkness, ice and snow . . . A literate, stylish memoir of personal adventure rich in history, geography and science.” — Kirkus Reviews

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Empire Antarctica – Gavin Francis

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Antarctic sea ice is ‘astonishingly’ low this melt season

by LieseloRylah Posted on January 3, 2019

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Right now, on the shores of Antarctica, there’s open water crashing against the largest ice shelf in the world. The annual ice-free season has begun at the Ross Ice Shelf — a month ahead of schedule.

The frozen region of freshwater ice the size of France partially protects the West Antarctic Ice Sheet from collapsing into the sea. In recent years, the ice-free season in the Ross Sea has become a routine event — but it happened this year on New Year’s Day, the earliest time in history.

“Antarctic sea ice extent is astonishingly low this year, not just near the Ross Ice Shelf, but around most of the continent,” says Cecilia Bitz, a polar scientist at the University of Washington.

In recent years, scientists have set up seismic monitoring stations on the ice shelf to track the wave energy as it percolates inland, potentially causing stress fractures on the Ross Ice Shelf along the way.

Bitz pointed to low ice concentration also happening right now in the Amundsen Sea, more than 1,000 miles away from Ross, and that’s potentially even more worrying. In a worst-case scenario, with continued business as usual greenhouse gas emissions, ice shelves all across West Antarctica could collapse within decades, melted from above and below and shattered by wave action.

After that, it would probably be just a matter of time before West Antarctica’s massive land-based glaciers, like the “Doomsday glaciers” at Thwaites and Pine Island, collapse as well, sending sea levels upward by as much as 10 feet and flooding every coastal city on Earth.

Sea ice concentration on January 1, 2019. The Ross Sea is on the lower edge of West Antarctica and Amundsen is north and near this map’s West Antarctica labeling.National Snow & Ice Data Center

Across the entire continent, there are more than 750,000 square miles of sea ice missing, a record deficiet for this time of year. Because it’s approaching mid-summer in the Southern Hemisphere, Antarctica will keep shedding sea ice for about another six weeks or so, and is currently on pace to drop far below the all-time record low set in 2016.

The North Pole and South Pole are both very cold, of course, but they couldn’t be more different in how climate change is affecting them.

The Arctic is an ocean fringed by cold continents, and has already passed a tipping point. Sea ice there has been declining sharply for decades — so much so that about a year ago, scientist declared the start of a “New Arctic,” with conditions likely unseen in at least 1,500 years, and probably much, much longer.

Owing to its unique geography (a cold continent fringed by a relatively warmer ocean), sea ice in the Antarctic region has long been considered something of a climate wildcard. A sharp decline in the Antarctic began only two years ago, and scientists aren’t sure yet if it will continue. If 2019 and the rapidly warming Southern Ocean is any indication, it will.

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Antarctic sea ice is ‘astonishingly’ low this melt season

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Boaty McBoatface is back to study a remote glacier with apocalyptic potential.

by zB7bB4yB6a Posted on May 1, 2018

The EPA administrator has racked up more than 40 scandals and 10 federal investigations since he took office last February. Nonetheless, Scott Pruitt was smiling when he walked in to testify in front of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Thursday.

Prior to the hearing, the New York Times reported that Pruitt had a plan to deal with tough questions: Blame his staff instead.

He stuck to it. When New York Democratic Representative Paul Tonko confronted him about raises given to two aides without White House approval, Pruitt said, “I was not aware of the amount, nor was I aware of the bypassing, or the PPO process not being respected.”

And Pruitt’s $43,000 soundproof phone booth? Again, not his fault. As Pruitt told California Democratic Representative Antonio Cárdenas: “I was not involved in the approval of the $43,000, and if I had known about it, Congressman, I would have refused it.”

“That seems a bit odd,” Cárdenas commented. “If something happened in my office, especially to the degree of $43,000, I know about it before, during, and after.”

Democratic Representative from New Mexico Ben Ray Luján pointed out that Pruitt was repeatedly blaming others during the hearing. “Yes or no: Are you responsible for the many, many scandals plaguing the EPA?” he asked.

Pruitt dodged the question: “I’ve responded to many of those questions here today with facts and information.” When Luján pressed him futher, Pruitt replied, “That’s not a yes or no answer, congressman.”

Well … it wasn’t a “no.”

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Boaty McBoatface is back to study a remote glacier with apocalyptic potential.

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British Columbia is having its worst wildfire season in recorded history.

by calendarortodox831 Posted on August 18, 2017

That’s all kinds of scary. If there’s one place on Earth that would be the worst possible spot for a giant volcanic chain, it’s beneath West Antarctica. Turns out, it’s not a great situation to have a bunch of volcanoes underneath a huge ice sheet.

In a discovery announced earlier this week, a team of researchers discovered dozens of them across a 2,200-mile swath of the frozen continent. Antarctica, if you’re listening, please stop scaring us.

The study that led to the discovery was conceived of by an undergraduate student at the University of Edinburgh, Max Van Wyk de Vries. With a team of researchers, he used radar to look under the ice for evidence of cone-shaped mountains that had disturbed the ice around them. They found 91 previously unknown volcanoes. “We were amazed,” Robert Bingham, one of the study’s authors, told the Guardian.

The worry is that, as in Iceland and Alaska, two regions of active volcanism that were ice-covered until relatively recently, a warming climate could help these Antarctic volcanoes spring to life soon. In a worst-case scenario, the melting ice could release pressure on the volcanoes and trigger eruptions, further destabilizing the ice sheet.

“The big question is: how active are these volcanoes? That is something we need to determine as quickly as possible,” Bingham said.

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British Columbia is having its worst wildfire season in recorded history.

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A trillion-ton iceberg just broke off Antarctica

by WilbertPCPT Posted on July 12, 2017

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A trillion-ton iceberg just broke off Antarctica

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This Paint Stripper Chemical Could Set Ozone Recovery Back Decades

by ShadBottrill Posted on July 3, 2017

In this day and age most people know that using aerosol propellents contributes to ozone depletion. Well, except if youre this guy. According to new research there is one chemical whose production has been on the rise in recent years and scientists aren’t sure why. This rapid rise could mean the restoration of our precious ozone layer could be delayed up to 30 years.

In 1987 the international Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer was created in response to data that demonstrated Antarcticas rapid loss of ozone would translate to a devastating global impact. The treaty was successful in outlawing cloroflourocarbons (CFCs)those pesky chemicals used as propellants in hairspray and other productsand the Antarctic region has been on the mend ever since. Projections for this hole in the ozone to completely be restored were set between the years 2050 and 2070that is, until this new research emerged.

A chemical called dichloromethane was found to have increased by 8 percent every year between the years of 2004 and 2014, according to a study published in the journal Nature Communications. This substance is used in paint strippers, industrial solvents, polyurethane foams, andyou guessed itas an aerosol propellent. The reason dichloromethane wasnt included in the Montreal protocols original ban was because it tends to break down very quickly in Earths atmosphere. Compared to CFCs taking up to centuries to disappear, this chemical was seen as a drop in the bucket.

The strange, recent uptick in this chemicals production is leaving scientists worried, however. The fact that it breaks down quickly doesnt do us much good if there is much more of the substance in the atmosphere than before. Researchers project the timeline for ozone restoration could be pushed back to the year 2090 if there arent measures taken to reduce the amount of dichloromethane productionand soon.

The Montreal protocol has proved very effective at reducing the emissions of substances that can harm the ozone layer, Johnathan Shanklin, one of the scientists who discovered the Antarctics ozone hole in 1985 told The Guardian. I am sure that the warning made in this paper will be heeded and that dichloromethane will be brought within the protocol in order to prevent further damage to the ozone layer.

Because the Montreal protocol is relatively young in the grand scheme of things, improvements and revisions will continue to be made as more data on the state of our atmosphere is collected. Researchers involved with the study are encouraging more thorough, long-term analysis of ozone-depleting gases for the purposes of expanding the protocol and protecting our future.

Photo credit: Thinkstock

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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This Paint Stripper Chemical Could Set Ozone Recovery Back Decades

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Antarctica is starting to go ice free — with some interesting consequences.

by ChristaBurge61 Posted on June 29, 2017

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Antarctica is starting to go ice free — with some interesting consequences.

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Ho hum, another scientific expedition to Antarctica … but this time the scientists are all women.

by deanneholiday6 Posted on December 2, 2016

According to satellite imagery, loggers depleted 3,000 square miles of the Amazon from August 2015 to July 2016.

That may be partially attributable to funding cuts that have hamstrung the government agency responsible for monitoring illegal logging. In 2004, Brazil created policies to decrease deforestation that seemed to be working until about two years ago, when, according to Greenpeace, lax enforcement of fines and abandoned protected areas from 2012 to 2015 led to a surge in logging.

Fortunately there’s a solution — one that indigenous people have advocated for in years of U.N. climate talks. An October analysis from the World Resources Institute shows that lands managed by indigenous groups had deforestation rates 2 to 3 times lower than other areas in Brazil, Colombia, and Bolivia. The same report listed over $523 billion in economic benefits that could come from securing indigenous land rights.

But land rights for indigenous groups, though set out in Brazil’s 1988 constitution, are often not respected — not unlike the situation surrounding the Dakota Access Pipeline in the U.S.

For now, deforestation accounts for 69 percent of Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing that percentage is essential for Brazil to meet its Paris Agreement commitments.

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Ho hum, another scientific expedition to Antarctica … but this time the scientists are all women.

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