Climate Crisis: Huge ice shelf collapses as Antarctica is nearly 35°C warmer this year

LONDON: The recent collapse of a over 1,100km2 ice shelf in East Antarctica came at a time of record high temperatures and is a clear symptom of a planet in climate crisis, experts say.

It seems the Antarctic region is warmer by about 35 to 40 °C this year and getting warmer as the months go by.

The Conger ice shelf, which cleaved away from the eastern side of Antarctica in March, is the latest victim of rising temperatures at the Earth’s poles.

Experts say as the polar regions warm, more ice is likely to melt, potentially pushing up sea levels and inundating coastal communities.

“The current concentration of greenhouse gases is higher than at any time in human history. It’s a very worrying signal,” said Pascal Peduzzi, Director of the Global Resource Information Database (GRID) – Geneva. GRID-Geneva is a partnership between the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment and the University of Geneva.

Satellite imagery, which dates back five decades, shows sea ice at both poles is in retreat. On February 21, 2022, Antarctic sea ice, which has until recently been stable, reached its minimum since measurements began in 1979.

The situation is much more dramatic at the opposite side of the planet. Forty years ago sea ice in the Arctic was typically three to four meters thick. Today, it is around 1.5 metres, according to a recent UNEP report, the Foresight Brief.

Thinner ice and more open water lead to increased absorption of sunlight and increased melting in summer. Since 1979 around 50 per cent of summer sea ice coverage has been lost.

“There has been a significant sea ice loss, especially in the last 20 years,” said Tore Furevik, a Director at the Nansen Environment and Remote Sensing Centre and a co-author of the Foresights Brief. “Sea ice loss indicates a climate that is getting warmer and warmer and is not in balance, The only way to stop this trend is to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.”

The temperature at Vostok Weather Station in the central part of Antarctica in March normally averages -53°C. But between March 16 and March 20, around the time the ice shelf is believed to have collapsed, the temperature was on average 35°C warmer, hitting a balmy-for-Antarctica -18°C on March 17. The heat wave is part of a warming trend being recorded globally.