The Guardian (December 31)
2023 was “the hottest year on record” and may mark “the year humanity put its stamp on Antarctica in ways that will be felt for centuries to come.” The continent “has suffered dramatic shifts that raise serious concerns about its immediate health.” These coincide with “evidence that longer-term transformations linked to the climate crisis have started much sooner” than expected. Beyond “ramifications for local wildlife,” there will be ripple effects “across the globe in ways that are often less well understood.”
Tags: 2023, Antarctica, Climate crisis, Concerns, Evidence, Hottest, Humanity, Ramifications, Record, Shifts, Transformations, Wildlife
Time (October 12)
Of the Antarctica’s “162 ice shelves, 68 show significant shrinking between 1997 and 2021, while 29 grew, 62 didn’t change and three lost mass but not in a way scientists can say shows a significant trend” according to a new study. “All told, Antarctic ice shelves lost about 8.3 trillion tons (7.5 trillion metric tons) of ice in the 25-year period….That amounts to around 330 billion tons (300 billion metric tons) a year.”
Tags: 1997, 2021, Antarctica, Ice shelves, Mass, Scientists, Significant shrinking, Trend
Salon (November 26)
“A wholesale collapse of Pine Island and Thwaites would set off a catastrophe. Giant icebergs would stream away from Antarctica like a parade of frozen soldiers. All over the world, high tides would creep higher, slowly burying every shoreline on the planet, flooding coastal cities and creating hundreds of millions of climate refugees. But “what we do now will determine how quickly” this ensues. “A fast transition away from fossil fuels in the next few decades could be enough to put off rapid sea-level rise for centuries. That’s a decision worth countless trillions of dollars and millions of lives.”
Tags: Antarctica, Catastrophe, Climate refugees, Collapse, Flooding, Fossil fuels, Icebergs, Pine Island, Shoreline, Thwaites, Tides
Mother Jones (July 12)
“One of the largest icebergs ever recorded broke off Antarctica’s Larsen C ice shelf…permanently altering the coastline of our planet’s frozen continent. Twice the size of Long Island and packing a trillion tons of ice—fully melted, that’s enough water to fill Lake Michigan—the newly birthed iceberg seems like a perfect symbol for our overheating world.” And yet, that is slightly misleading. Other than posing a shipping hazard, “as long as the parent ice shelf remains stable, A68 should have no measurable impact on the rest of the planet.”
Tags: A68, Antarctica, Hazard, Ice shelf, Iceberg, Largest, Larsen C, Melted, Overheating, Ships, Stable
New York Times (September 17)
A proposal to create a 875,000-square-mile reserve around Antarctica is being whittled down by 40%. It shouldn’t be. “The reserves would protect what is still the most pristine aquatic ecosystem in existence, and they would extend to the ocean some of the international protection that the continent enjoys: the recognition that the south polar region is a world treasure, off limits to the frenzy of resource extraction playing out across the rest of the planet.”
Tags: Antarctica, Ecosystem, Existence, International protection, Ocean, Planet, Pristine, Resource extraction, World treasure
