Even though a few years back there were some reports about Antarctica’s weather getting cooler, recent studies show what many already believed - the continent is getting warmer. The global warming process appears to have influenced Antarctica also, which could have critical consequences in the future.
The scientists from the Intergovernamental Panel on Climate Change, responsable for tracking the evolution of global warming, have announced on various occasions that greenhouse gases and global warming have clearly hit six of the world's seven continents, as the evidence from Antarctica is still unclear. They reported that even though West Antarctica shows clear signs of rapid warming, the significantly larger eastern area appears to be cooling.
The scientists involved in the present study used the data recorded by satellite over the past 25 years and also all the information gathered by weather stations starting with the 1950s. All the content was put together and the conclusion is that over the past 50 years, the temperatures in Antarctica have risen by about 0.5 Celsius.
The details for this study are presented in the current edition of the journal Science. "The thing you hear all the time is that Antarctica is cooling and that's not the case," explains Eric Steig of the University of Washington in Seattle, lead author of the study, in the journal. Up to this point, many scientists stated that global warming is a myth, saying that the proof is Antarctica’s temperatures which keep dropping.
The fact is that the weather is indeed getting warmer and this could bring a devastating efect on the whole world. What some people do not realize is that Antarctica’s frozen water, if it would ever fully melt, would raise the sea level by 57 meters (187 feet), putting is great danger many islands and coastal cities.
West Antarctica "will eventually melt if warming like this continues," explained Drew Shindell, of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who is one of the study’s authors. According to his estimates, a 3 Celsius (5.4 F) rise could be enough to trigger a wide melt of West Antarctica. Over the past 20 years, ten ice sheets have receded or collapsed, and now, the Wilkins sheet is also expected to break away, being held in place by a sliver of ice only 500 meters wide, alarmingly low compared to its size in the 1950s, when it was 100 km wide.
There are also some who believe that global warming is just one of the reasons for Antarctica’s situation and that a determinant factor is also the ocean and its movement.
The two-degree global increase, forecasted before the end of the century, will bring major probelms to the entire world. Even though it might not seem that much, scientists claim that food crops will be affected in certain areas and the rising sea levels could bring underwater many low-lying coasts and islands.
We might be 30 years late, but we must try to make a difference in any way we can. Every single effort is important and once people will understand this, we might actually see a change.
