COPENHAGEN: The planet’s warming local weather is having results in Antarctica that more and more resemble these noticed within the Arctic, that means world sea ranges may rise sooner that beforehand predicted, Danish researchers warned on Friday (Oct 3).
“Antarctica has lengthy been thought of extra steady than the Arctic. However right now, the image has modified,” Ruth Mottram of the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) mentioned in an announcement.
“Sea ice is disappearing. Temperatures are rising right here too. Ice streams are accelerating and meltwater is penetrating the crevasses within the glaciers, inflicting them to slip sooner in the direction of the ocean,” she continued.
Mottram warned that the event was “alarming, as a result of the ice plenty within the south have a dramatic potential when it comes to rising sea ranges right here within the north”.
The Danish researcher, along with six colleagues, printed an article within the journal Nature Geoscience on the “Greenlandification of Antarctica”.
The scientists, whose conclusions are based mostly on satellite tv for pc observations and local weather fashions, use the time period “Greenlandification” as a solution to perceive and “predict adjustments within the Antarctic atmosphere by way of the lens of well-observed and understood adjustments in Greenland”.
“We use the experiences from Greenland as a form of ‘laboratory’ to grasp the identical processes in Antarctica,” Mottram defined.
“Sadly, it seems that our experiences from residence have gotten more and more related.”
“The Antarctic cryosphere displays a dynamic atmosphere strongly influenced by regional environment and ocean adjustments, extra just like Greenland than beforehand recognised,” the researchers say within the article.
If Greenland’s ice sheet have been to soften totally, world sea ranges would rise by about seven metres.
If this have been to happen in Antarctica, the ocean degree rise may exceed 50m, DMI mentioned.
