"Big changes to #Antarctic sea ice will have a profound effect on other parts of the planet. In addition to protecting the exposed edges of Antarctica’s continental ice shelves from waves, the formation of sea ice acts as an engine for ocean currents and influences weather patterns in the Southern Hemisphere, the researchers said."
❄️ #Antarctic sea ice extent was 20% below average, the 6th lowest March extent in the record;
❄️ #Arctic sea ice reached its annual maximum in March, marking the highest extent for the month since 2013.
'Poleward winds, which previously made few inroads into the atmosphere above Antarctica, are now carrying more and more warm, moist air from lower latitudes – including Australia – deep into the continent…'🔥
..
'After examining recent changes in sea ice coverage in Antarctica, the group concluded there had been an “abrupt critical transition” in the continent’s climate that could have repercussions for both local Antarctic ecosystems & global climate system.'
Meanwhile all the patriarchy can do is arm the warmongers and torturers.
The antarctic is getting hotter at at least twice the rate the rest of the world is... when you know that it accounts for around 60% of the world's freshwater (frozen of course), then we might wonder how well we are prepared for when (not if) much of that water melts into the sea?
Certainly this is a slowly building crisis, so we have time to think about responses, but equally the danger is also to put off thinking about it!
‘Simply mind-boggling’: world record temperature jump in Antarctic raises fears of catastrophe
On 18 March, 2022, scientists at the Concordia research station on the #east#Antarctic#plateau documented a remarkable event.
They recorded 💥the #largest#jump in #temperature ever measured at a meteorological centre on Earth. 💥
According to their instruments, the region that day experienced a rise of 38.5C above its seasonal average: a world record.
This startling leap
– in the coldest place on the planet
– left polar researchers struggling for words to describe it.
“It is simply mind-boggling,” said Prof Michael Meredith, science leader at the British Antarctic Survey.
“In sub-zero temperatures such a massive leap is tolerable but if we had a 40C rise in the UK now that would take temperatures for a spring day to over 50C – and that would be deadly for the population.”
This amazement was shared by glaciologist Prof Martin Siegert, of the University of Exeter.
“No one in our community thought that anything like this could ever happen. It is extraordinary and a real concern,” he told the Observer.
“We are now having to wrestle with something that is completely unprecedented.”
Poleward winds, which previously made few inroads into the atmosphere above Antarctica, are now carrying more and more warm, moist air from lower latitudes
– including Australia
– deep into the continent, say scientists,
and these have been blamed for the dramatic polar “heatwave” that hit Concordia.
Exactly why these currents are now able to plunge so deep into the continent’s air space is not yet clear, however.
@climateben
BREAKING: staggered #climate scientists warn anything is now possible (and they mean anything) after the biggest jump in temperature ever recorded anywhere on Earth occurs in the #Antarctic
The freeze-up continues in the #Antarctic after the annual minimum was reached a few weeks ago. Sea-ice extent is unusually low, but is well above the previous record for the current date.
University of Washington researchers have demonstrated the fastest-known large-scale breakage along an #Antarctic ice shelf. The study shows that a 6.5-mile (10.5 kilometre) crack formed in 2012 on Pine Island Glacier — a retreating ice shelf that holds back the larger West Antarctic ice sheet — in about 5 and a half minutes. That means the rift opened at about 115 feet (35 meters) per second, or about 80 miles per hour. #ClimateChange#antartctica#iceshelf#IceSheets
Patterns of March surface air temperatures in the #Antarctic averaged by decade using ERA5. Note that there are larger uncertainties in observational products across this region.
did a radio podcast thing for our #Antarctic voyage - it was a great conversation (Sharon Brettkelly was so on to it) but I rambled as usual - the team at Radio NZ crafted a great (and dare I say important) story. And our PhD student Liv just aced it with enthusiasm to counter my school principal vibe. #DoYourSelfaFavour#climate#oceanography#polynya
It's now a full month since the #Antarctic sea ice minimum this year and still hardly any new ice has formed in the Bellingshausen Sea (lower left in image).
People speculate about when the first "blue ocean event" will occur in the Arctic. In this sector of the Southern Ocean they're already happening. #seaice concentration map from analysis of AMSR2 data by University of Bremen Institute of Environmental Physics.
"Climate models can’t explain 2023’s huge heat anomaly — we could be in uncharted territory
Taking into account all known factors, the planet warmed 0.2 °C more last year than climate scientists expected. More and better data are urgently needed."
Good piece in Nature this week by Gavin Schmidt covers the extremely anomalous temperatures in 2023, well before El Nino got started as well as the loss of #Antarctic#SeaIce and aerosols...
The #Antarctic monthly #seaice extent for February 2024 landed among the 3 lowest on record, behind 2023 and very close to 2017.
Nowhere, does sea ice in Feb 2024 seem to fall outside the 30-year mean contour. Except for the A23 #iceberg that is seen northeast of the Antarctic peninsula 🧊😀
The #Antarctic experiment offered a snapshot of something that has happened innumerable times throughout human history, as groups of people have become cut off from others, leading their accents, dialects and even languages to diverge from each other. On a grand scale, the researchers say it can provide insights into why American and British #English has diverged in the way it has.
They deployed sound and movement tags on Antarctic fur seals 🦭in Kerguelen Islands and recorded for the first time underwater vocalizations during foraging in this species 🎙️!
implausibly real... layer cake of #Antarctic cloud, Victoria Land mountains (some being 4 km high) and an ocean right at the point of #seaice forming... we slowly drifted up to it before starting a sampling line moving up the coast. #oceanography#cold
Irish Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton was born #OTD in 1874. After the race to the South Pole ended in December 1911, Shackleton turned his attention to the crossing of Antarctica from sea to sea, via the pole. The expedition was struck by disaster when "Endurance" became trapped in pack ice and finally sank in the Weddell Sea off Antarctica in November 1915. via @wikipedia