Much of the focus on global warming has been on the melting of the Arctic and the polar icecaps. However, as the world anticipates an intergovernmental meeting next month in Paris to discuss the issue, it seems as if there may be issues on the other end of the world, as well. The Antarctic appears to be in danger, and while scientists largely agree on this fact, there is disagreement as to the magnitude of the repercussions.
There is compelling historical evidence, reports Eurekalert, that the West Antarctic ice sheet may be vulnerable to rapid retreat and collapse. And Alan Condron, at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has obtained a grant of nearly $700,000 to study this phenomenon over the course of three years. “A lot of the climate modeling work done up to now has focused on the Arctic …” says Condron, “But no one has been thinking much about what happens to climate if Antarctica’s major ice sheets suddenly melt, say over the next 50 to 100 years. It’s a huge gap in the research.”
Condron has a few theories, going in, as to what might might happen.
Edwards comes up with an estimate of a sea rise of about 10cm, matching the most recent assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“We don’t know what would happen if that current or other large ocean currents are disrupted or if the speed changes, but we do know ocean currents play a big role in keeping Antarctic cold locked up and in moving heat around the globe. If ocean currents are disrupted, it could affect weather patterns and might have a big impact in North America or Europe. Changes in rainfall and temperature could affect crops and forests tens of thousands of miles away from Antarctica,” he says.
On the other hand, BBC reports, some scientists say that these estimates are exaggerating the actual impact the melting will have. Dr. Tasmin Edwards, of the Open University, UK, is using a different model to make estimates. He explains: “we take those 3,000 runs [of these test] and compare them to what’s happening now in the Amundsen Sea, and if any look as though they are going too fast or too slow, we give them a lower weight in the future. We’re constraining the model with the observations. Nobody has really done this sort of formal scoring before.”
Edwards comes up with an estimate of a sea rise of about 10cm, matching the most recent assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
