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This enormous temperature jump could have huge impacts. On 18th March 2022 scientist at Concordia research station on the east side of Antarctica. To put this leap in perspective, that would take a normal spring day in the UK, up to some of the highest temperatures ever recorded on planet earth.
Continue reading “World record temperature jump recorded in Antarctica 38.5”
The Ross ice shelf is vast, covering 182,000 square miles, it is only slightly smaller than France, and yet a study has shown, that the whole ice shelf can move 40 cm in just 10 minutes. These were generally caused by slips in the Whillans Ice Sheet, which is one of just a few ice flows into and through the area.
The whole shelf was found to move 6-8cm once or twice a day, triggered by these flows moving. This could be the cause of both icequakes, and fractures running through the ice (fractures are important, as they make it more likely that a section of the ice will break off the edge of Antarctica and head into the ocean. While this ice can, on occasion survive a long time – A23a broke of Antarctica in 1986 and has been floating free for much of the time since (except for a decade or so when it grounded); it was estimated to be 400m thick and weigh in at nearly 1 trillion tonnes.
This is a problem for a simple reason. Unlike the north pole, there is land under the ice in Antarctica. This means that while in the north pole, the ice sheet is already in the sea, so its melting cannot increase sea level, Antarctic ice all does increase sea levels.
The Ross ice shelf is known to have collapsed 120,000 years ago during the last interglacial period, and contains enough ice to raise sea levels by 11.5m (this would also cause another 2m of sea level rise because of the glaciers which would no longer be held back).
A Dutch startup, is trialling mitigating this in the Arctic, by pumping sea water onto the ice. This then freezes, thickening the ice. It is possible that this might work in the short term, however, what is clear, is that the only long-term solution, is to stop burning fossil fuels, so as to halt the heating of the earths climate.
The hourglass dolphin  is a small dolphin in the family Delphinidae that inhabits offshore Antarctic and sub-Antarctic waters. It is commonly seen from ships crossing the Drake Passage, but has a circumpolar distribution.
The species was identified as a new species by Jean René Constant Quoy and Joseph Paul Gaimard in 1824 from a drawing made in the South Pacific in 1820. It is the only to have been widely accepted as a species solely on witness accounts.
Sighting surveys were conducted in 1976–77 and 1987–88. Abundance was estimated to be 144,300 individuals, based on line transect sightings in January 1977 and January 1988 in northern Antarctic waters. This is the only abundance estimate of hourglass dolphins to date.
It is currently listed as least concern on the IUCN red list.
Below you will find a video of the species, and below this a list of any articles that have (or will be) written on this species. Under this, we will over time, hope to add links which will help you see this animal in the wild.
The fear is that, with the Tonga eruption, this larger than normal hole might do extra damage to the vast store of ice on Antactica.
Why is this concerning?
Well, given the Antarctic and the Greenland icesheet has enough ice to raise sea levels by 65m worldwide. This means a 5% melt in Antarctica would raise sea levels by several meters (even without any melting of Greenland at all).
This quantity of sea level rise, would threaten cities such as Shanghai and London, to large parts of Florida and Bangladesh to total nations that would be wiped out, such as Maldives.
This means that while it may well take a century and increased carbon emissions for all of the ice at the poles to melt, it could threaten human populations long before this occurs.
Around 410 million people on earth live within just 2m of the height of the sea. This is roughly 5% of human population. Currently, there are issues with just 2% immigration into the UK. A sea level rise of 2m would likely trigger an order of magnitude more to move here, Western Europe, USA and other countries. We are all going to be hit hard, but some far harder than others.
Under the Biden administration in the USA, science is not ignored. There were a handful of animals that were listed as endangered in the rest of the world, but the listing was not changed in the USA because of the political impact. Thankfully, that time is at least over at the current time. The Emperor penguins are obviously threatened by global warming given there uses of extreme areas of the Antarctic.
The population that was filmed for the popular film “March of the Penguin” has halved in size in the last 50 years. These sorts of issues are predicted to lead to a 99% reduction in population by the end of the century, should these changes not lead to the total extinction.
The Thwaites glacier is an important glacier in western Antarctica. It is already thought to account for about 4% of global sea level rise. This glacier has suffered a rapid retreat from the land shelf in just 6 months – a process that can naturally take several centuries.
The bigger problem that Thwaites glacier currently brings, is the fact that this glacier seems to largely be the dam wall, holding much of the ice back. As a result, while Thwaites glacier can increase water levels by an alarming amount, a collapse is predicted to increase global sea levels by between 90cm and 300cm.
In other words, this glacier alone, with a full collapse, as much as 5% of the worlds population will have to move as their home will be under water. Unfortunately far more people may well find that their way of live is no longer possible.
Regular readers of this blog will remember me mentioning this not long ago, unfortunately the last 6 months has shown the situation to be far worse.
There are species of penguin found in New Zealand. However Adelie penguins are not, they live in Antarctic waters. As such there is some confusion as to how one ended up there.
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