Scientists warned that melting of Antarctic Sea -ice cream could cause irreversible climate changes, including rises on sea level, loss of life in the sea and changes in ocean currents.
The newspaper in the diary Nature Focused on describing the rather unprecedented details The interlocking effects of global warming on Antarctica, the frozen continent on the south pole of the planet.
“There is evidence on the rise for fast, on each other and sometimes self -resistant changes in the Antarctic environment,” said it.
The study collected data from observations, ice cream cars and ship logs to map long -term changes in the field of sea ice, so that a rapid decline in the context has mapped out in recent years.
“A regime shift has reduced the Antarctic sea ice circumvention far below its natural variability of the past centuries and is in some respects more abrupt, non-linear and potentially irreversible than loss of the Arctic sea ice,” it said, referring to melting on the North Pool.
Changes in the ecosystem have coupling effects that in some cases reinforce each other, said Nerilie Abram, main author of the study.
A smaller ice sheet reflects less solar radiation, which means that the planet absorbs more heat and will probably speed up a weakening of the Antarctic destructive circulation, an oceaning current that distributes heat and nutrients and regulates it again.
Loss of ice increasingly damages nature, including emperor penguins, who breed on the ice, and krill, which feed underneath.
And the warming of the surface water will also reduce the phytoplankton populations that remove huge amounts of carbon from the atmosphere, according to the study.
“Antarctic Sea -ice can actually be one of those tilting points in the system of the earth,” said Abram, a former professor at Australian National University (Anu) and now chief scientist at the Australian Antarctic Division.
Repeating worldwide carbon dioxide emissions would reduce the risk of major changes in Antarctica, but may not occur, according to the study.
“As soon as we start losing Antarctic Sea ice cream, we trained this independent process,” said Abram. “Even if we stabilize the climate, we are committed to lose for many centuries in the coming centuries.”
