Sea ice in the antarctic region has fallen to a record low this year as a result of rising global temperatures and there is no quick fix to reverse the damage done, scientists said yesterday in a new study of the impact of climate change on the continent.
The continent’s minimum summer ice cover, which last year dipped below 2 million square kilometers for the first time since satellite monitoring began in 1978, fell further to a new low in February, a study published in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science said.
“It’s going to take decades if not centuries for these things to recover. There’s no quick fix to replacing this ice,” said Caroline Holmes, polar climate scientist at British Antarctic Survey and one of the study’s coauthors.
Photo: Reuters
“It will certainly take a long time, even if it’s possible,” she told a briefing with journalists.
This year’s sea ice minimum is 20 percent lower than the average over the past 40 years, equivalent to a sea ice loss nearly 10 times the area of New Zealand, said Tim Naish, director of the Antarctic Research Centre at New Zealand’s Victoria University of Wellington, who was not a participant in the study.
“In some cases we are getting close to tipping points, which once crossed will lead to irreversible changes with unstoppable consequences for future generations,” Naish said.
Photo: AP
Global warming driven by the burning of fossil fuels has made Antarctica more vulnerable to extreme events and the impact is “virtually certain” to get worse, the study said.
Climate change would “lead to increases in the size and frequency” of heat waves, ice shelf collapses and declines in sea ice, it said, drawing on recent evidence from scientific studies of the antarctic ocean, atmosphere, cryosphere and biosphere.
The precise impact of climate change on Antarctica and the surrounding ocean has been uncertain and scientists have struggled to measure how much global warming is affecting the thickness of antarctic ice.
However, from phenomena such as the rapid decline in sea ice, it is “scientifically reasonable” to assume that extreme events are going to intensify as global temperatures rise, said Martin Siegert, a glaciologist at the University of Exeter and another coauthor.
Last year, an “atmospheric river” originating from Australia drove subtropical heat and moisture into the continent, causing unprecedented temperatures up to 38.5oC above normal, the largest variance from the norm the world has ever experienced.
Siegert described the temperature increase as “absolutely astonishing,” adding that if it had occurred during the Antarctic summer, instead of winter, it would have triggered melting on the surface of the East Antarctic ice sheet, which has so far been spared from melting.
“Antarctica is fragile as an environment, but extreme events test that fragility,” he said. “What we’re deeply concerned about is the increase in intensity and frequency of extreme events and the cascading influences that they have in other areas.”
DISCONTENT: The CCP finds positive content about the lives of the Chinese living in Taiwan threatening, as such video could upset people in China, an expert said Chinese spouses of Taiwanese who make videos about their lives in Taiwan have been facing online threats from people in China, a source said yesterday. Some young Chinese spouses of Taiwanese make videos about their lives in Taiwan, often speaking favorably about their living conditions in the nation compared with those in China, the source said. However, the videos have caught the attention of Chinese officials, causing the spouses to come under attack by Beijing’s cyberarmy, they said. “People have been messing with the YouTube channels of these Chinese spouses and have been harassing their family members back in China,”
Tropical Storm Usagi strengthened to a typhoon yesterday morning and remains on track to brush past southeastern Taiwan from tomorrow to Sunday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. As of 2pm yesterday, the storm was approximately 950km east-southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan proper’s southernmost point, the CWA said. It is expected to enter the Bashi Channel and then turn north, moving into waters southeast of Taiwan, it said. The agency said it could issue a sea warning in the early hours of today and a land warning in the afternoon. As of 2pm yesterday, the storm was moving at
The Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said there are four weather systems in the western Pacific, with one likely to strengthen into a tropical storm and pose a threat to Taiwan. The nascent tropical storm would be named Usagi and would be the fourth storm in the western Pacific at the moment, along with Typhoon Yinxing and tropical storms Toraji and Manyi, the CWA said. It would be the first time that four tropical cyclones exist simultaneously in November, it added. Records from the meteorology agency showed that three tropical cyclones existed concurrently in January in 1968, 1991 and 1992.
GEOPOLITICAL CONCERNS: Foreign companies such as Nissan, Volkswagen and Konica Minolta have pulled back their operations in China this year Foreign companies pulled more money from China last quarter, a sign that some investors are still pessimistic even as Beijing rolls out stimulus measures aimed at stabilizing growth. China’s direct investment liabilities in its balance of payments dropped US$8.1 billion in the third quarter, data released by the Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange showed on Friday. The gauge, which measures foreign direct investment (FDI) in China, was down almost US$13 billion for the first nine months of the year. Foreign investment into China has slumped in the past three years after hitting a record in 2021, a casualty of geopolitical tensions,
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