Signs of the Doomsday from Antarctica are increasingly evident due to global warming. PHOTO/ DAILY
LONDON – Extreme heat which is currently sweeping the whole world and helping to melt some of the ice floes. This phenomenon strengthens the doomsday signal from Antarctica that is increasingly inevitable.
According to a new study, if global warming is allowed to continue unchecked as it is now, Antarctica could soon pass a “point of no return” that could reduce the continent to arid, even ice-free for the first time in more than 30 million years.
“Antarctica is basically our main legacy from earlier times in Earth’s history. It has existed for about 34 million years,” said study co-author Anders Levermann, a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany.
“Now our simulations show that once it thaws, it will not grow back to its original state (until) temperatures return to pre-industrial levels… Very unlikely scenario. In other words, we are losing Antarctica now, lost forever,” he said.
In the study, PIK researchers ran computer simulations to model how Antarctica would look thousands of years from now, depending on how much the average global temperature rises in response to modern greenhouse gas emissions.
They found that, if average temperatures rose 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial levels over a period of time, much of West Antarctica’s ice would collapse. This resulted in 21 feet (6.5 meters) of global sea-level rise.
An increase of that magnitude would devastate coastal cities like New York, Tokyo and London. This scenario could become a reality in a few decades.
According to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a rise in global average temperature of 9 degrees F (5 degrees C) is currently considered a “worst case” warming scenario. This could happen if current levels of greenhouse gas emissions are allowed to continue until 2100.
2023-08-19 06:40:27
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