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First direct evidence that human activity is linked to Antarctic Ice Shelf collapse
October 17, 2006The first direct evidence linking human activity to the collapse of Antarctic ice shelves is published this week in the Journal of Climate. Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling, University College London, and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, (Belgium) reveal that stronger westerly winds in the northern Antarctic Peninsula, driven principally by human-induced climate change, are responsible for the marked regional summer warming that led to the retreat and collapse of the northern Larsen Ice Shelf.
Global warming and the ozone hole have changed Antarctic weather patterns such that strengthened westerly winds force warm air eastward over the natural barrier created by the Antarctic Peninsula's 2 km-high mountain chain. On days when this happens in summer temperatures in the north-east Peninsula warm by around 5 degrees C, creating the conditions that allowed the drainage of melt-water into crevasses on the Larsen Ice Shelf, a key process that led to its break-up in 2002.
Lead author Dr Gareth Marshall from the British Antarctic Survey said, "This is the first time that anyone has been able to demonstrate a physical process directly linking the break-up of the Larsen Ice Shelf to human activity. Climate change does not impact our planet evenly - it changes weather patterns in a complex way that takes detailed research and computer modelling techniques to unravel. What we've observed at one of the planet's more remote regions is a regional amplifying mechanism that led to the dramatic climate change we see over the Antarctic Peninsula."
British Antarctic Survey
British Antarctic Survey
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Antarctic Current Events and Antarctic News RSSYour own private global warming
A group of researchers from the British Antarctic Survey have collected individuals from a wide range of species commonly found in Antarctic waters and subjected them to increasing levels of water temperature to learn how each species is prepared to cope with the conditions that they are likely to experience in the future.
Space shuttle science shows how 1908 Tunguska explosion was caused by a comet
The mysterious 1908 Tunguska explosion that leveled 830 square miles of Siberian forest was almost certainly caused by a comet entering the Earth's atmosphere, says new Cornell University research.
Close relationship between past warming and sea-level rise
In a paper in Nature Geoscience, a team from the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS), along with colleagues from Tübingen (Germany) and Bristol presents a novel continuous reconstruction of sea level fluctuations over the last 520 thousand years.
Ice Sheets Can Retreat
Modern glaciers, such as those making up the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, are capable of undergoing periods of rapid shrinkage or retreat, according to new findings by paleoclimatologists at the University at Buffalo.
Melting threat from West Antarctic Ice Sheet may be less than expected, could hit US hardest
While a total or partial collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet as a result of warming would not raise global sea levels as high as some predict, levels on the U.S. seaboards would rise 25 percent more than the global average and threaten cities like New York, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, according to a new study.
Threat from West Antarctica less than previously believed
The potential contribution to sea level rise from a collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) have been greatly overestimated, according to a new study published in the journal Science.
Ocean Carbon: A Dent in the Iron Hypothesis
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New Antarctic seabed sonar images reveal clues to sea-level rise
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Increasing levels of rare element found worldwide
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Unlikely life thriving at Antarctica's Blood Falls
An unmapped reservoir of briny liquid chemically similar to sea water, but hidden under an inland Antarctic glacier, appears to support microbial life in a cold, dark, oxygen-poor environment -- a most unexpected setting to be teeming with life.
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