Antarctica is melting faster than previously thought.
Antarctic Ice as seen in Google Earth
There’s a story in the International Herald Tribune titled , citing a study published in last week’s Nature Geoscience that paints yet another gloomy picture.
Skeptics about global warming often point to Antarctica to show that Al Gore and others who worry about climate change have exaggerated the dangers greatly. They may concede that the Arctic is melting and even that Greenland is beginning to appear a bit shaky.
But look at Antarctica, they will say. It’s actually growing colder, and the ice sheet is thickening.
That argument is becoming harder to sustain. According to a study published last week in the journal Nature Geoscience, changes in water temperature and wind patterns related to global warming have begun to erode vast ice sheets in western Antarctica at a much faster rate than anyone had previously detected.
The study, Recent Antarctic ice mass loss from radar interferometry and regional climate modelling, is available for subscribers, or for a fee for those scientifically inclined. The study’s authors found that West Antarctica has been losing ice 60 percent faster than 10 years ago.
Meanwhile it seems ironic that Australia has just started regular flights to Antarctica; aviation after-all contributes to this melting. But these flights are for scientific study purposes only it’s claimed. A bit like those Japanese whalers I imagine. How long before moneyed tourists are flocking down there to study a bit of Antarctica for themselves? — DS
Technorati Tags: Antarctic, Antarctica, climate change, flights, glaciers, global warming, ice, ice caps, ice shelf, meltdown, Peter Garrett, sea level rise, sea levels, tourism, travel
