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Climate change is speeding up in Antarctica
By Sergi González Herrero, Universitat de Barcelona
In recent years, Antarctica has experienced a series of unprecedented heatwaves. On 6 February 2020, temperatures of 18.3C were recorded, the highest ever seen on the continent, beating the previous record of 17.5C which had only been set a few years earlier.
Around February 2022, another strong heatwave in Antarctica led to record-breaking surface ice melt. In March of the same year, East Antarctica saw its strongest ever heatwave, with temperatures soaring to 30C or 40C higher than the average in some areas.
Over the last year, we have seen the lowest levels of Antarctic sea ice coverage since records began.
Events in recent years have bordered on the unbelievable, and it is difficult not to link them to climate change. In fact, studies have already emerged that clearly attribute some of these heatwaves to global warming: one of our investigations strongly suggests that without the influence of climate change, 2020’s record-breaking temperatures would not have occurred.
Antarctica’s changing climate
In 2009, a study quantified the speed of ecosystem migration due to climate change on a global scale, and documented, essentially, the speed at which certain species have to move to ensure their survival. It concluded that biomes were moving at a speed between 0.8 and 12.6km per decade, with an average speed of 4.2km per decade.
In our more recent study, published in February 2024, we adapted this measurement of speed and applied it to the edges of Antarctica. To do this, we tracked the southward migration of the zero-degree isotherm.
The zero-degree isotherm is an imaginary line that encloses the areas that are at zero degrees or lower. Its southward movement means that the area with temperatures below zero Celsius in Antarctica is getting smaller and smaller. Given that water freezes at zero degrees, this movement will have serious consequences for ecosystems and for the cryosphere (areas of the Earth where water is frozen).
Read Full Story https://theconversation.com/climate-change-is-speeding-up-in-antarctica-225951