lightblueline

The BBC has released a report entitled "Earth - melting in the heat?" which outlines current studies about global climate change. While the lightblueline has been looking at ice melting in Greenland, the BBC also gives some very interesting information about the Antarctic.
"Huge, pristine, dramatic, unforgiving; the Antarctic is where the biggest of all global changes could begin.

There is so much ice here that if it all melted, sea levels globally would rise hugely - perhaps as much as 80m. Say goodbye to London, New York, Sydney, Bangkok, Rio... in fact, the majority of the world's major cities.

But will it happen? Scientists divide the Antarctic into three zones: the east and west Antarctic ice sheets; and the Peninsula, the tongue of land which points up towards the southern tip of South America.

'Everybody thinks that the Antarctic is shrinking due to climate change, but the reality is much more complex,' says David Vaughan, a principal investigator at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, UK.

'Parts of it appear to be thickening as a result of snowfall increases. But the peninsula is thinning at an alarming rate due to warming.

"The West Antarctic sheet is also thinning, and we're not sure of the reason why.'"

The threat to the Greenland ice sheet is only one part of the overall effects of human induced climate change.

This report is available at the following URL:

Earth - melting in the heat?