The amount of ice in Antarctica is falling rapidly, with the fall occurring from an all-time high to an all-time low. And this fact baffles scientists.
As NASA satellites show, the area of drifting ice on the southern continent has steadily increased since 1979, reaching a record high in 2014. But three years later, the average annual sea ice area in Antarctica has reached its lowest point, wiping out three and a half decades of increment.
“There has been a lot of madness going on with drifting ice in recent years,” says Marc Serrez, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Serrez and other outside experts say they don’t understand if the process is a natural surge that will go away, or a longer-term global phenomenon, most likely warming that will finally overtake the South Pole.
“The fact that such dramatic changes were able to take place in such a short time should be seen as evidence that the Earth has the potential for even more significant and rapid changes,” Walid Abdalati of the University of Colorado said in an email.
In polar regions, ice levels traditionally rise in winter and decrease in summer. In 2014, sea ice in Antarctica was spread over an area of 4.9 million square miles (12.8 million square kilometers) on average. But by 2017, that level was at an all-time low of 4.1 million square miles (10.7 million square kilometers).
Thus, the difference in only three years covers an area larger than the size of Mexico. According to Claire Parkinson, NASA climatologist, the loss of such a colossal area in just three years is incredible and very rapid, unprecedented, surpassing anything that scientists have ever seen.
After a precipitous decline by 2017, Antarctica's sea ice area increased slightly in 2018, but still remained at a record low since 1979. And now, despite the fact that at this time of the year in Antarctica the volume of drifting ice is growing - the levels in May and June 2019 are the lowest on record, surpassing the records of the winter of 2017.
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Fortunately, melting ice on the ocean's surface does not change sea level. However, the observed phenomenon presents a completely different problem: all modern climate science is bursting at the seams.
The Arctic is a floating ice cap in an ocean surrounded by continents, so when ice melts at the North Pole, everything is more or less explicable. But Antarctica is already a continent, that is, a land surrounded on all sides by an ocean. Therefore, as NASA climatologist Claire Parkinson explains, drifting ice in Antarctica always spreads much more than in the Arctic - it has a place to grow.
And while the drifting sea ice in Antarctica grew steadily, scientists talked about changes in the nature of winds and pressure, changes in the circulation of the ocean. Including considered the theory of global climate change, the theory of El Niño, for which at the South Pole scientists came up with “relatives”. But now, as Parkinson says, all these explanations are falling apart like a house of cards and what is happening is a mystery even for NASA climatologists.
Editorial comment
Since even housewives in Mexico know that ice melts at positive temperatures and freezes at negative temperatures, a decrease in the area of drifting ice can have only two reasons:
a) It got colder in Antarctica, the ice stopped sliding into the Ocean and therefore the area of sea ice decreased.
b) It has become warmer in Antarctica, but it has become so warm that the ice sliding into the Ocean quickly melts, as if it were thrown into a hot underground spring.
NASA writes quite often about Antarctica and, judging by the latest data from the renowned agency, the ice is bursting there at the seams. That is, everything melts and falls into the water with terrible force:
So there is definitely no cooling in Antarctica. Therefore, the correct option is b). That is, the temperature of the Ocean in the Antarctic region has increased and this explains everything. But what caused the local increase in ocean temperature is an open question.