Antarctic Ice Shelf On The Rocks
As if you needed more evidence that the climate’s on thin ice. In Antarctica, an ice bridge that was holding the vast Wilkins Ice Shelf to the continent has collapsed. It’s likely Wilkins will soon follow.
The ice bridge has been retreating since the late 1990s. In 1950, it was almost 100km wide but, just before collapsing, its thinnest point was just 500 metres wide. The bridge acted as a brace for the massive Wilkins Ice Shelf, which is about half the size of Scotland and now threatens to break away completely from Antarctica. Scientists see this major event as evidence of rapid warming in the region.
Witness the Wilkins Ice Shelf collapse via European Space Agency’s Webcam from Space.
Moving at a glacial pace in Bonn
Climactic changes in Antarctica are happening much faster than scientists had predicted. If only the same could be said for progress towards a new global climate agreement. At the UN meeting in Bonn this week, negotiations to cut greenhouse emissions are moving at glacial pace.
Our senior climate campaigner, Trish Harrup, reports from the Bonn climate conference, ‘Governments are trying to avoid acting responsibly and bickering about who’s at fault. In particular, Australia must start to show some real leadership by tearing up its pathetic emissions reduction target and committing instead to halving our emissions in a decade.’
Without government action on climate change, we can expect more severe climate change impacts. The world’s negotiators at Bonn have one more week to show that they understand the threat and are ready and willing to act.
>> Take action: Sign the climate petition
>> Read Final Warning: The world’s rapid descent into runaway climate change
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May 6th, 2009 at 5:31 am
(April 18 2009)
East Antarctica is four times the size of west Antarctica and parts of it are cooling. The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research report prepared for last week’s meeting of Antarctic Treaty nations in Washington noted the South Pole had shown “significant cooling in recent decades.”
Take note “COOLING” in recent “DECADES”
September 11th, 2009 at 8:29 am
If humanity as a whole does not soon recognize that carbon dioxide emissions affect global temperatures like chlorofluorocarbons affect the ozone layer, our children are going to have a lot of very complex issues to deal with.
The melting of the Antarctic ice sheet is just the beginning. The more ice melts, the more water rises, which causes more ice to melt.
I wrote a blog entry specifically talking about thisAntarctica and Our Changing Global Environment.
The person who commented above me is right in the sense that some parts of Antarctica are cooling. However, there are many parts of Western Antarctica where the ice shelves that used to be there are almost gone. The Antarctic Peninsula is the perfect example of this. Rising temperatures have caused a 2500% increase in Antarctic hairgrass and a 500% increase in Antarctic pearlwort since the 1960′s.
See “current sea level rise” on Wikipedia for more information and links. They even mention that if we lose part of the W. Antarctic reservoir, which is landlocked, it would raise the sea level by 5-6 meters alone.