Climate change – effect on Antarctic ice – sheet

Climate change – effect on Antarctic ice – sheet

Global warming is real, it is happening more quickly in some parts of the world than others.

The Antarctic Peninsula is particularly sensitive to small rises in the annual average temperature, this has increased by nearly 3°C in the region in the last 50 years, this is about 10 times faster than the average in the rest of the world. This makes it an excellent study area.

The temperature of Western Antarctica has also risen by a comparable amount, this is the region attached to the Peninsula and stretches to the Transantarctic Mountains.

The temperature of Eastern Antarctica has risen by a much smaller amount or has remained stable, this is the region on the other side of the Transantarctic Mountains.

There is no unusual significant loss of ice of any kind from the larger 96% of Antarctica that is not the Peninsula.

Rising temperatures cause ice shelves to break up - as they are floating already this will not affect sea levels, it may cause the glaciers behind them to speed up their flow-rate considerably. These glaciers will add to sea-level rise if they melt.

The temperature of Antarctica as a whole is predicted to rise by a small amount over the next 50 years. Any increase in the rate of ice melting is expected to be at least partly offset by increased snowfall as a result of the warming.

The extent of annual sea-ice has been changing in both the Arctic and Antarctic, in both cases it is explicable in terms of global warming.

Antarctica influencing weather in tropics

1.      Context: Scientists are coming to grips with how weather in Antarctica is influencing climate as far away as the tropics

2.    Relevance: Researchers discovered an influence of atmospheric circulation in the Wilkes Land and Ross Sea regions of Antarctica on
precipitation from the East Asian monsoon

3.    The News: The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement West Antarctic Radiation Experiment (AWARE) project gains importance

4.    Study: How climate change and associated atmospheric physics are affecting Antarctica

5.     Result: An expanding Hadley cell is generally expected to result from a globally warming atmosphere

6.    So the Antarctic warming from cloud property change is a positive feedback on a warming climate