{"id":979,"date":"2023-10-16T00:19:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-16T00:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/?p=979"},"modified":"2023-10-17T10:23:33","modified_gmt":"2023-10-17T10:23:33","slug":"climate-change-brings-rapid-ice-loss-to-antarctica-arctic-swiss-glaciers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/2023\/10\/16\/climate-change-brings-rapid-ice-loss-to-antarctica-arctic-swiss-glaciers\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate Change Brings Rapid Ice Loss to Antarctica, Arctic, Swiss Glaciers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This story includes details on the impacts of climate change that may be difficult for some readers. If you are feeling overwhelmed by this crisis situation <\/em>here is a list of resources<\/em><\/a> on how to cope with fears and feelings about the scope and pace of the climate crisis.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heatwaves and rapid ice loss are showing up in Antarctica, the Arctic, and Switzerland\u2019s glaciers, with news reports from all three regions pointing to the accelerating impacts of global heating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Winter maximum sea ice hit a record low in Antarctica September 10, at 16.96 million square kilometres, \u201cadding to scientists\u2019 fears that the impact of climate change at the southern pole is ramping up,\u201d Thomson Reuters reports<\/a>, citing preliminary data from the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just a record-breaking year, it\u2019s an extreme record-breaking year,\u201d said NSIDC senior scientist Walt Meier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cResearchers warn the shift can have dire consequences for animals, like penguins, who breed and rear their young on the sea ice while also hastening global warming by reducing how much sunlight is reflected by white ice back into space,\u201d the news agency adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sea ice extent around the southern pole actually increased between 2007 and 2016, Thomson Reuters said, but that trend has since reversed. Last year, an \u201cunprecedented\u201d 39\u00b0C temperature variation near the eastern coast of Antarctica was caused largely by the region\u2019s natural variability, with a warming climate playing some role, a new study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters concluded<\/a>. It was \u201cthe largest temperature anomaly ever recorded globally,\u201d falling outside the range predicted by climate models.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was just very apparent that it was a remarkable event,\u201d lead author Edward Blanchard-Wrigglesworth told<\/a> the Washington Post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Normal March temperatures in the region are typically around -54\u00b0C, the Post explains. But \u201con March 18, 2022, daily mean temperatures rose to -15\u00b0C, while an hourly temperature recording even peaked at -10\u00b0. That\u2019s warmer than even the hottest temperature recorded during the summer months in that region,\u201d a measurement that Blanchard-Wrigglesworth described as \u201cpretty unbelievable\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The new study attributes the stunning heatwave to unusually fast northerly winds from southern Australia that brought significant snow, rain, and melting to the eastern coast of the Antarctic ice sheet. Record-low sea ice on the frozen continent apparently had no impact on the heatwave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe new study asserts that the warmer atmosphere didn\u2019t play a large role boosting temperatures,\u201d the Post writes. \u201cBut climate change could have had another effect the models didn\u2019t test, such as the effect on the anomalous winds that brought the warm air mass to the continent in the first place.\u201d Meteorologist Jonathan Wille, an ETH Zurich researcher who was not a part of the study, \u201csaid unusual tropical downpours in the weeks beforehand created an atmospheric circulation pattern that was never observed before\u2014leading to the extreme heat,\u201d the news story states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s possible that climate change influenced the atmospheric dynamics like the tropical convection anomalies that led to the heatwave, but this is very difficult to quantify these things,\u201d he told The Post in an email.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Arctic \u201chas been hit hard by climate change over the last decade, with sea ice rapidly deteriorating as the northern region warms four times faster than the global average,\u201d Thomson Reuters writes. And Switzerland\u2019s epic glaciers have lost 10% of their overall volume over the last two years after seeing their worst-ever melt rate in 2022 and their second-worst this year, The Associated Press reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe one-two punch for Swiss glaciers during the country\u2019s third hottest summer on record means they lost as much ice in two years as in the three decades before 1990,\u201d AP says, citing a release from the Swiss Academy of Sciences. The research team attributed that \u201cmassive ice loss\u201d to a combination of very low winter snow volumes, which left the glaciers more exposed to direct sunlight, and high summer temperatures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Switzerland has already lost up to 1,000 small glaciers, out of an estimated total of 1,400, and \u201cnow we are starting to lose also bigger and more important glaciers,\u201d said Matthias Huss, head of the GLAMOS monitoring agency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGlaciers are the ambassadors of climate change. They make it very clear what is happening out there, because they respond in a very sensitive way to warming temperatures,\u201d he said. \u201cThe study underlines once again that there is big urgency to act now if you want to stabilize climate, and if you want to save at least some of the glaciers.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This story includes details on the impacts of climate change that may be difficult for some readers. If you are feeling overwhelmed by this crisis situation here is a list of resources on how to cope with fears and feelings about the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":980,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=979"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":981,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/979\/revisions\/981"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcticwatch.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}