Sudden and potentially irreversible change Antarctica Conducted by Climate change Scientists warned on Wednesday that global oceans can be picked up from the meter and “frightening results for generations”.
More broadly, a state -of -the -art review by a score of top experts intensifies changes throughout the region that often causes both causes and effects of global warming. A study published in NatureA colleague reviewed an international scientific magazine.
The authors of the study suggest that limiting Co2 emissionsAnd in turn, preventing global warming from exceeding at least 1.5 ° C, “suddenly” would be mandatory to reduce and prepare the widespread impacts of Antarctic and Southern Ocean changes.
“Antarctica is showing signs of concern for rapid changes in its snow, ocean and ecosystem,” the lead writer and Professor Nerili Abram of the Australian National University told Egens France-Press. “Some of these sudden changes will be difficult to stop.”
Changes in various aspects of Antarctica’s climate system increase each other and intensify the speed of warming globally, Abram said.
Evidence of sudden change in studies – or “shift of governance” – was seen in sea ice, regional ocean streams, continent ice sheets and snow shelves and marine life. It also investigated how they interact.
The floating marine ice does not add enough to the sea level when melting, but its retreat replaces white surfaces that reflects almost all of the sun’s energy back into space with dark blue water, which instead absorbs equal volumes.
Ninety percent of the heat generated by man -made global warming is soaked by the oceans.
Leaving the sea ice behind
After a slight increase during the first 35 years that satellite data was available, Antarctic sea ice cover Dramatically drowned in the last decade.
Since 2014, sea ice has retreated from the coastline of the continent, on average, 120 kilometers or about 75 miles. This contraction has occurred almost three times faster in 10 years than a decline in more than 50 Arctic sea ice.
As of July 2025, the daily sea ice range in both hemispheres was its third lowest in the 47 -year satellite record, according to its third lowest National snow and ice data center In Colorado University Boulder.
Data from NASAContinued in 2020, indicated that Antarctica and Greenland lost thousands of gigton ice between 2003 and 2019. Indirectly contributor The overall sea level worldwide grows more than half an inch.
Last September, scientists warned Antarctic snow sheetOfficially the thwites called the glacier, “further and rapid” will deteriorate, with an enlarged melting to trigger the growing sea level. Research conducted by International Thwtes Glacier Cooperation, a collective of more than 100 scientists, found that the amount of water flowing into the sea from thwites glacier doubled from 1990 to the 2010s.
“Heavy proof of a governance shift in sea ice” means that, on current trends, Antarctica may essentially be snow -free compared to the Arctic in summer, found in a recent study published on Wednesday in nature.
This will accelerate the region and beyond heating, and may push some sea species towards extinction, warning experts.
In the last two years, for example, the helpless emperor penguin girls were killed on many reproductive grounds, drowning or cold for death when sea ice gave way before normal.
In 2023, out of the five sites monitored in the Belinghosen Sagar region, all experienced 100 percent loss of girls, earlier research reported.
In contrast to sea ice, ice sheets and ice shelves, they are connected – or supported by land.
The world will need to heat 5 ° C compared to pre-industrial levels to melt the entire Antarctic ice sheet, which will raise the global oceans about 58 meters or about 200 feet.
point of no return
To date, global warming – an average of about 1.3 ° C – is rapidly reaching a threshold, which will be part of the ice sheet, which will generate an increase in at least three meters of sea level, which will flood the coastal areas today by millions of people.
Abram said, “The unbeatable collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet is the highest related to global tipping points,” Abram said.
“The evidence points to trigger on global warming below 2 ° C.”
Another possible risk is the collapse of the Antarctic overturning circulation, a system of sea streams that distribute heat and nutrients at the region and globally.
A “rapid and adequate recession” of streams has already begun, and evidence from the previous interglassal period – between the age of two snow – before our own, 125,000 years ago, indicating a sudden stagnation of the system under the same terms of the conditions seen today.
“This will lead to wider climate and ecosystem effects,” from a deepness of global warming to the lack of ocean ability to absorb CO2, the study explained.
Finally, the only way to slow down interlocking changes is to stop adding more planetary-warming gases to the atmosphere.
Abram said, “Greenhouse gas emission decisions that we make in the coming decade or two will lose how much ice will and how soon they will be lost,” Abram said.
