Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Wilkins Ice shelf disintegration

The footage is linked at the top of this piece [P.S. and now here too].

"Antarctic life has nowhere to go if the warming continues", says Sven Thatje in Chilling Lessons from Ice Ages Past.

[P.S. Andy Revkin notes: the frozen continent, being a continent, is exhibiting a broad array of climate conditions, with some parts cooling and adding ice through accumulated snowfall, and others, like the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, potentially poised to lose large amounts of ice to the sea in coming decades. In the meantime, the thin floating veneer of sea ice that forms each austral winter and fades in summer has been larger than usual lately, in contrast to the sharp summer sea-ice retreats in the Arctic.]

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