Where Do The Unprecedented Climate Records of a Melting World Come From?
Climate warnings from Antarctica and South America echo across the globe
The entire Atlantic seaboard, along with Florida, San Francisco’s hills, and San Diego: all gone.
The Amazon Basin transformed into an Atlantic inlet, wiping out Buenos Aires, coastal Uruguay, and most of Paraguay.
Alexandria and Cairo swamped by the intruding Mediterranean.
London and Venice, remnants of history; The Netherlands and Denmark, now deep-sea diving locations.
Cambodia’s Cardamom Mountains? A new island.
This apocalyptic world is the future we are heading toward if Antarctica, paired with the Greenland Ice Sheet (GIS), continues its record-setting fast-paced melting.
The Complexity of Antarctic Ice Sheet Melting
Recent reports from July 30th, 2023, reveal that Antarctica has lost a mass of ice the size of my country, Argentina, the 8th largest country in the world.
The Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS), holding the potential to cause a staggering 58 meters (190 feet) of global sea level rise (more than eight times that of the Greenland Ice Sheet), is experiencing dramatic changes at unprecedented rates.
Circum-Antarctic summer and autumn heatwaves have been soaring temperatures up to 40°C above the average. And sea ice extent has been at record lows during both summer and winter, surpassing scientists’ predictions.
The chilling truth of climate change reverberates across the globe, posing profound and far-reaching impacts that demand urgent attention and collaboration.
Understanding the melting process
But to what extent is melting ice and sea level rise cause-and-effect? What does the science tell us? The contribution of ice sheets to sea level rise responds to two main components:
- Surface Mass Balance (SMB): the balance of surface mass accumulation (precipitation) and ablation (melting) on the ice sheet.
- Dynamic Contributions: physical transportation of grounded ice into the ocean through glacier flow. Once afloat, this ice contributes to sea level rise through the displacement of water.
The Surface Mass Balance contribution accounts for only about 10% of the Antarctic Ice Sheet’s total mass balance. In Antarctica’s dry and frigid conditions, the SMB contribution remains relatively low compared to Greenland, where it constitutes up to 68% of the total mass balance. However, a warmer and wetter Antarctica due to climate change may enhance accumulation and reduce ablation. This leads to a small negative contribution of SMB to sea levels, at least in the initial stages of temperature increase relative to pre-industrial levels.
Dynamic Contributions play a more active role. Basal melting of floating ice shelves is the primary driver of these dynamic contributions. While the direct melting of ice shelves contributes negligibly to sea level rise, these structures serve a vital function in stabilizing the flow of grounded ice into the ocean.
The loss of ice shelves can lead to an accelerated ice flow from the land into the ocean, exacerbating sea level rise. Portions of the AIS grounded below sea level on reverse or retrograde slopes are particularly susceptible to rapid collapse via the Marine Ice Sheet Instability (MISI) mechanism.
Other dynamic processes, such as ice shelf hydrofracturing and Marine Ice Cliff Instability (MICI), can also contribute to sea level rise.
A Chilling Reality
Climate records continue to break as global warming from burning fossil fuels and natural weather systems collide.
July witnessed unprecedented events that have far-reaching consequences on marine ecosystems and human livelihoods.
On July 6th 2023, the world experienced its hottest registered day, surpassing the previous 2016 record. According to EU climate monitoring service Copernicus, the global thermometer reached a blistering 17.08°C, topping 17°C for the first time since we started keeping track.
Imperial College London climate science lecturer Dr. Paulo Ceppi warns: “The Earth is in uncharted territory now due to global warming from burning fossil fuels, as well as heat from the first El Niño — a warming natural weather system — since 2018.”
The world’s oceans have become a battleground of extreme temperatures, shattering records for every day since late March.
A technical chart from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — a United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change — unveils the unsounded heat gain. Between 1971 and 2018, the ocean actively absorbed a staggering 396 zettajoules of heat. To put that into perspective, that represents the equivalent energy of more than 25 billion Hiroshima atomic bombs.
And what’s even more concerning is that this heat gain is picking up pace.
The ocean gained an additional 10 zettajoules of heat in 2022 compared to the previous year. 10 zettajoules of heat is roughly equivalent to 240,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs. That’s also the total energy consumed by the entire world in a day, and enough to power the whole United States for over 12 years.
In contrast, the atmosphere has retained only about 2% of the extra heat generated by global heating since 2006, according to another study.
The consequences of this mounting heat are alarming. Marine heatwaves are becoming more frequent and severe, wreaking havoc on marine ecosystems. Coral reefs are experiencing bleaching, and underwater plants, which are vital habitats for marine life and fishery nurseries, are dying off. Check out these climate anomalies listed by NOAA in June 2023 (just one month):
Which brings us back, at the bottom of the NOAA chart, to sea ice. Antarctic sea ice has shown variability for decades between historical highs and lows.
But since 2016, scientists have witnessed a drastic downward trend that defies all expectations. This year, it is at its lowest since records began 45 years ago.
The depressing record-breaking Antarctic sea-ice lows is shivering. The National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that sea ice in Antarctica is currently around 1.6 million square kilometers below the previous low winter record set in 2022.
As I said before, that’s the equivalent size of Argentina. Or the combined areas of Texas, California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado.
We find ourselves standing at the edge of the unknown.
As Professor Schmidt puts it, “It’s definitely not the best-case scenario that we were looking at — it’s closer to the worst case.”
The Inescapable Interconnectedness
Another blossoming day here in Patagonia: chilly mornings but warm afternoons with t-shirts, sunglasses, and a paddle at the lake. The alarming detail here is that we are more than a month away from the beginning of spring. It should be cold and snowy and skiable. Unprecedented heatwaves and rains have replaced cherished powder days, turning winter into a transition between summers.
The lake is as high as it has ever been. But it is a mirage in the reality that is coming: the water reserves for this summer are at their lowest since they depend on the winter snow.
There’s no way to escape the interconnectedness between Antarctica and the rest of the Earth’s system. Our backyard is the living evidence of the changes in the Antarctic and Southern Ocean and elsewhere around the globe.
This is a critical moment in human history, and we cannot afford to overlook Antarctica’s warnings. As we face the reality of climate change, we must remember that every action we take impacts our planet and our future.
If we fail to act swiftly, we risk pushing our world into an irreversible state of climate catastrophe.
The race against time has begun. It probably did a long time ago, but now it is evident as the increasing number of wildfires, high temperatures and driest seasons taking over the Patagonian landscape.
The time to act is now. Failing to do so risks pushing our world into a climate catastrophe from which there may be no return.
Thank you for your thorough reading and support!
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