Researchers have turned to hydrophones, instruments that use underwater microphones to gather data beyond the reach of any camera or satellite. Pxfuel
By Kristen Pope
Melting and crumbling glaciers are largely responsible for rising sea levels, so learning more about how glaciers shrink is vital to those who hope to save coastal cities and preserve wildlife.
<p>But it is hard to get good pictures and measurements because glaciers typically are in remote, difficult-to-reach, and even dangerous locations. Satellites are often used to measure glacial retreat, but these images are far from complete, especially when it's cloudy, foggy, raining, or snowing.</p><p>So researchers have turned to hydrophones, instruments that use underwater microphones to gather data beyond the reach of any camera or satellite. Hydrophones can record underwater in all conditions. Originally used by the military to detect submarines, hydrophones are now one more tool scientists have to learn about climate change. The devices collect data continuously and they are relatively inexpensive and easy to deploy and maintain in many different areas of the world to monitor sea ice, underwater earthquakes, ship noise, and even wildlife patterns.</p>
Groans, Creaks, Icebergs’ Calving Splashes
<p>Oskar Glowacki already knew that melting glacial ice sounds like frying bacon. As ice bubbles burst, anyone nearby can hear crackling and popping, said Glowacki, a postdoctoral scholar at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Using hydrophones, he and other scientists now can make more nuanced measurements of how a changing climate sounds underwater, from the groans, creaks and splashes of a calving iceberg to the changes in whale songs as the ocean warms.</p><p>Glowacki recently used a pair of hydrophones to study the underwater world of glaciers, publishing his findings in <a href="https://www.the-cryosphere.net/14/1025/2020/" target="_blank">The Cryosphere</a>. He and co-author Grant B. Deane measured glacier retreat by <a href="https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/07/melting-glaciers-sound-like-frying-bacon/" target="_blank">recording the sounds of ice</a> – from small chunks to enormous slabs – falling off the glacier and splashing into the water.</p><p>During the summer of 2016, Glowacki's team placed two hydrophones near Hansbreen Glacier in Hornsund Fjord, Svalbard. For a month and a half, they recorded sounds, also using three time-lapse cameras to collect images – including the "drop height" (how far the ice fell into the water) – so they could compare photos to the recordings. The team created a formula to represent the relationship between the size of a piece of ice falling from a glacier and the sound it makes underwater, also accounting for the pieces of ice falling from varying heights. (Hear an example of the sound an iceberg makes while calving <a href="https://soundcloud.com/user-248456662/iceberg-calving-hansbreen-glacier" target="_blank">here</a>.)</p><p>"Iceberg calving, defined as mechanical loss of ice from the edges of glaciers and ice shelves, is thought to be one of the most important components of the total ice loss," they note in their paper. They mention also that 32-40% of the Greenland ice sheet's mass loss is from solid ice discharge. However, Glowacki says it isn't just one process leading to glaciers losing mass: Surface melt, calving, and under-sea melting are all contributing factors.</p><p>Satellites are often used to measure glacial retreat, but the images they provide don't present a complete picture, and Glowacki and other scientists say they hope hydrophones can help provide more answers. Given that glaciers are typically remote and difficult to reach, collecting data remotely is key. Hydrophones, on the other hand, can record underwater in all these conditions.</p><p>Hydrophones also collect acoustic data and smaller events hard to find from a satellite image. "In a single day, [you] can have 100 or 200 icebergs breaking off from a single glacier," Glowacki says.</p><p>Glowacki says he and his team plan to further study iceberg calving, including studying additional glaciers, and collecting data for longer periods of time.</p>
Unlocking Information About Antarctic Ice Shelf
<p>Other researchers also are using hydrophones to learn more about crumbling glaciers. Bob Dziak, research oceanographer with the NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory <a href="https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/acoustics" target="_blank">acoustics research group</a>, captured a massive calving event of the Nansen Ice Shelf in Antarctica with a hydrophone. He published the results with colleagues in <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2019.00183/full" target="_blank">Frontiers in Earth Science</a></p><p>On April 7, 2016, satellite images showed a massive calving event had occurred on the ice shelf. The paper described it as the "first large scale calving event in >30 years."</p><p>However, once Dziak and colleagues delved into the data from three hydrophones deployed 60 kilometers east of the ice shelf, they uncovered a series of "icequakes" from January to early March 2016. He and other researchers believe that much of the ice actually broke free in mid-January to February, but it remained in the same location until an April storm – which their paper described as the "largest low-pressure storm recorded in the previous seven months" – broke the ice free.</p><p>"We suspected that the icebergs broke apart but remained in place – kind of pinned in place – until a major storm with high winds passed through the area and, finally, it was that last push that pushed the icebergs out to sea," Dziak says.</p><p>He and his co-authors wrote that "fortuitous timing and proximity of the hydrophone deployment presented a rare opportunity to study cryogenic signals and ocean ambient sounds of a large-scale ice shelf calving and iceberg formation event."</p>Listening to Songs of Humpback Whales
<p><a href="https://www.mbari.org/" target="_blank">Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute</a> studies the ocean, including its acoustics. One of the institute's projects involves examining the soundscape of California's Monterey Bay, including sounds from animals, humans, weather, and geologic processes like earthquakes. The researchers once even recorded an under-sea landslide. They also focus on recording and analyzing the <a href="http://www.mbari.org/humpback-song/" target="_blank">songs of humpback whales</a>. Male humpback whales' songs can be over 15 minutes in length, and they can be repeated for long periods of time – even hours. Listening to these songs and analyzing them can provide unique insights into the lives of these complex animals.</p><p>"Any time we want to study marine mammals, sound gives us a window into their lives because they use sound for all of their essential life activities, really," says institute biological oceanographer John Ryan. "Communication, foraging, reproduction, navigation – depending on the species, of course."</p><p>Previously, scientists had thought singing occurred only during courtship and mating, but now they think whales may also use song while migrating and hunting. They know song has a crucial role in the whales' lives.</p><p>"There's a whole other dimension to humpback whale song," Ryan says. "It is a mode of cultural transmission in this species. They learn songs from each other. They share songs as a population, and when populations mix and mingle, they learn new ideas, they explore with their song, improvise, and it's a real essential part of their culture."</p><p>In 2015, institute researchers placed a hydrophone 3,000 feet deep, recording and analyzing humpback whale songs. Between 2015 and 2018, they collected over 26,000 hours of audio, which they used computer software to analyze. The researchers determined "peak singing season" in November through January, and they found most singing occurred at night. During peak season, songs were heard around 70% of the night.</p><p>However, from September 2015 to May 2016, they detected whales singing only about 11% of the time. Those months correlated with a period when the water temperature was especially high, depleting stocks of vital food sources like anchovies and krill, and correlating also with a toxic algal bloom. Scientists think the whales may have had to devote more time and energy to finding food, leaving less for singing. As researchers continue to study the worlds' oceans, they will undoubtedly learn more about underwater mysteries.</p><p>Listen to MBARI's live stream from beneath the bay <a href="https://www.mbari.org/soundscape-listening-room/" target="_blank">here</a>.</p>
<p><em>Reposted with permission from </em><em><a href="https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/07/hearing-the-under-sea-whispers-of-a-warming-climate/" target="_blank">Yale Climate Connections</a>.</em></p>
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A man walks on pink snow at the Presena glacier near Pellizzano, Italy on July 4, 2020. MIGUEL MEDINA / AFP via Getty Images
In a troubling sign for the future of the Italian Alps, the snow and ice in a glacier is turning pink due to the growth of snow-melting algae, according to scientists studying the pink ice phenomenon, as CNN reported.
<p>The algae will make the snow melt faster. The salmon-hue that has tinged the snow is from algae that carry carotenoid pigment, which reflects the distinctive color. While most algae thrive in warm freshwaters, these are known as cryophilic, meaning they thrive in colder temperatures, where they create the "watermelon snow" effect, according to <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/07/06/bizarre-pink-snow-in-the-alps-is-actually-a-bad-omen-for-earth/" target="_blank">Salon</a>.</p><p>The concern is that the algal bloom on the snow will accelerate the effects of the climate crisis. As <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/06/algae-turns-italian-alps-pink-prompting-concerns-over-melting" target="_blank">Agence France-Presse</a> (AFP) reported the plant, known as <em>Ancylonema nordenskioeldii</em>, is often found in Greenland's so-called Dark Zone, where the ice is also melting.</p><p>Normally ice reflects more than 80 percent of the sun's radiation back into the atmosphere, but as algae appear, they darken the ice so that it absorbs the heat and melts more quickly, according to AFP.</p>
<p>"Everything that darkens the snow causes it to melt because it accelerates the absorption of radiation," said Biagio Di Mauro of Italy's National Research Council to AFP. "We are trying to quantify the effect of other phenomena besides the human one on the overheating of the Earth." He noted that the presence of tourists could also have an effect in weakening the snow.</p><p>Di Mauro told CNN that the spring and summer had very little snowfall high in the Alps, which has seen higher than average temperatures. "This creates the perfect environment for the algae to grow," he added.</p><p>Di Mauro emphasized that the algal bloom is particularly bad news for the glaciers, which may see a rapid melting. That would be in line with glaciers around the world that are starting to fade away as global heating continues to push up atmospheric temperatures.</p>
<p>"A classic reminder of how uncertainty is not our friend," said Dr. Michael E. Mann, a distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Penn State University, to Salon by email. "In this case, we're seeing an amplifying feedback wherein biological darkening (due to Algae growing on the surface of melting ice), leads to more solar absorption by the ice and even faster melting. We call this a 'positive feedback' but it is anything but positive. It reflects a process which is leading to faster melting of the glaciers than our simple models predict."</p><p>As CNN noted, Di Mauro has come across cold temperature algae before. He has previously studied the Morteratsch glacier in Switzerland, where an algae called <em>Ancylonema nordenskioeldii</em> has turned the ice purple.</p>
<p>Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science's Department of Global Ecology, told Salon that "photosynthetic organisms are designed to absorb sunlight. Some small fraction of the energy in sunlight goes into making carbohydrates but most of it goes into heating the organism and its local environment. If that organism is living in snow, the snow is likely to melt."</p><p>This algae has also been found in southwestern Greenland as well in as the Andes and Himalayas. Globally, glaciers are melting. A <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/antarctic-glacier-sea-level-rise-2645574336.html" target="_self">March study</a> found an Antarctic glacier had retreated three miles and can cause five feet of sea level rise if it melts completely. A <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/himalayan-glacier-melt-doubled-2638927563.html" target="_self">2019 study</a> found that Himalayan glacier melt has doubled since 2000. Additionally, conservationists and scientists have held funerals for glaciers in <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/iceland-glacier-funeral-2639890762.html" target="_self">Iceland</a> and the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/swiss-alps-pizol-glacier-funeral-2640547054.html" target="_self">Swiss Alps</a>.</p>
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Antarctica and Greenland Raised Sea Levels More Than Half an Inch in Just 16 Years, New NASA Data Shows
01 May
Climate
Greenland's fast-melting Kangerdlugssup glacier. NASA / Jim Yungel
Greenland and Antarctica have raised global sea levels by more than half an inch in the last 16 years, according to data from the most advanced laser that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has ever launched into space to observe the earth.
<p>While the figures themselves are consistent with other studies, as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/30/climate/antarctica-ice-climate-change.html?campaign_id=51&emc=edit_MBE_p_20200501&instance_id=18124&nl=morning-briefing&regi_id=88631294&section=whatElse&segment_id=26351&te=1&user_id=d8eb7cee9d3c5ab39515239b6ec54d19" target="_blank">The New York Times pointed out</a>, the satellite laser allows researchers a much more precise picture of how polar ice is changing over time, which helps determine the role of the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" target="_self">climate crisis</a> and plan for future <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/sea-level-rise" target="_self">sea level rise</a>.</p><p>"We've all been waiting for this new dataset," Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory research professor Robin Bell <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/04/30/848398472/antarctica-and-greenland-are-losing-thousands-of-gigatons-of-ice-thats-a-lot?utm_term=nprnews&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=npr&fbclid=IwAR2t-fTSchEfWMFJe_R91Jy86koAqTfmGlewTvq9eG6z0lzpdM1w8GjogGY" target="_blank">told NPR</a>.</p>
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<p>The study, <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/04/29/science.aaz5845" target="_blank">published in Science Thursday</a>, combines data from two NASA satellites: the original Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite (ICESat), which took measurements from 2003 to 2009, and ICESat-2, launched in 2018. The two satellites allowed researchers to measure changes in ice mass from 2003 to 2019, and to calculate that Greenland and Antarctica contributed 0.55 inches to sea level rise during that time. That's around a third of the global total, which was also driven by the expansion of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/oceans" target="_self">oceans</a> as they warm, NPR explained.</p><p>"If you watch a <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/glaciers" target="_self">glacier</a> or ice sheet for a month, or a year, you're not going to learn much about what the climate is doing to it," University of Washington glaciologist and lead study author Ben Smith said in a <a href="https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2981/nasa-space-laser-missions-map-16-years-of-ice-sheet-loss/?fbclid=IwAR0vi9r5VM03t_d9hDoceJSHkeEsxDtzOIApDy3x4TniEx4UowY02_j-bSM" target="_blank">NASA press release</a>. "We now have a 16-year span between ICESat and ICESat-2 and can be much more confident that the changes we're seeing in the ice have to do with the long-term changes in the climate."</p>
<p>The data also revealed that Greenland's ice sheet lost an average of 200 gigatons of ice per year and Antarctica's lost an average of 118. That's more than 5,000 gigatons total, NPR reported. To put that in perspective, one gigaton is enough to fill 400,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.</p><p>But the satellite data also helped show how the ice was being lost. In Antarctica, the East actually gained mass, probably because of increased precipitation, The New York Times reported. But this was offset by losses in West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula. In West Antarctica, 30 percent of that loss was due to floating ice, which either calves icebergs or melts from below due to warm ocean water. While this ice cannot contribute directly to sea level rise because it is already floating, its loss destabilizes the so-called "grounded ice" that can.</p><p>"It's like an apple tart and the ice shelves are like the wall of pastry around the edges of the tart," Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California-San Diego glaciologist and study coauthor Helen Fricker explained to NPR. "And if those walls are too thin or they're not baked well enough, then the filling will ooze out."</p><p>In Greenland, two thirds of the ice loss was due to surface melting, something that rarely occurs in Antarctica, The New York Times said. Greenland also lost a lot of mass from its coastal glaciers, according to NASA. Its Kangerdulgssuaq and Jakobshavn glaciers have shrunken by 14 to 20 feet per year.</p>
<p>NASA explained why its satellites were able to provide such a detailed portrait:</p><blockquote>ICESat-2's instrument is a laser altimeter, which sends 10,000 pulses of light a second down to Earth's surface, and times how long it takes to return to the satellite – to within a billionth of a second. The instrument's pulse rate allows for a dense map of measurement over the ice sheet; its high precision allows scientists to determine how much an ice sheet changes over a year to within an inch.<br><br>The researchers took tracks of earlier ICESat measurements and overlaid the tracks of ICESat-2 measurements from 2019, and took data from the tens of millions of sites where the two data sets intersected. That gave them the elevation change, but to get to how much ice has been lost, the researchers developed a new model to convert volume change to mass change. The model calculated densities across the ice sheets to allow the total mass loss to be calculated.</blockquote><p>This level of detail is essential for helping coastal residents and governments plan for sea level rise, which is expected to reach two to six feet by 2100, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/30/climate-change-antarctica-greenland-ice-melt-raised-sea-levels-by-half-inch-in-last-16-years.html" target="_blank">according to CNBC</a>.</p><p>"Our goal is to be able to tell every coastal community what they can plan on [in] the coming decades," Bell told NPR. "To be able to do that, we both need to measure how the ice is changing but also understand better why it's changing."</p>
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Antarctica before and after its hottest day on record Feb. 6. NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey and GEOS-5 data from the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office at NASA GSFC.
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Penguins are seen near the Great Wall station in Antarctica, Feb. 9, days after the continent measured its hottest temperature on record at nearly 65 degrees Fahrenheit. Xinhua / Liu Shiping / Getty Images
By Richard Connor
Scientists have recorded Antarctica's first documented heat wave, warning that animal and plant life on the isolated continent could be drastically affected by climate change.
<p>Australian Antarctic Program researchers recorded the heat wave event at Casey research station in East Antarctica during the 2019-2020 southern hemisphere summer.<em></em></p>
<p>Findings by the team were published in the Global Change Biology journal on Tuesday, with authors warning that the changes could affect global weather patterns.</p><p>Between January 23 and 26, a research team at Casey — directly south of Perth in western Australia — recorded the highest maximum and minimum temperatures ever seen at the base.</p>
<p>During the period, minimum temperatures were higher than zero degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit) while the maximums peaked above 7.5 degrees.</p><p>On January 24, the Casey team recorded a record high temperature of 9.2 degrees Celsius, 6.9 degrees higher than the station's mean maximum.</p><p>Heat waves are classified as three consecutive days where very high maximum and minimum temperatures are recorded.<br></p><p><span></span>At the same time, record high temperatures were also reported on the other side of the continent, on the Antarctic Peninsula. Last month, <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/antarctica-records-continents-hottest-temperature-ever/a-52295518" target="_blank">the highest ever temperature — 18.3 degrees — was recorded at the Argentinian research station Esperanza Base</a>.</p>
Global Impact on Climate
<p>The authors of the study said the local effects of climate change could have a global impact.</p><p>"Antarctica may be isolated from the rest of the continents by the Southern Ocean, but it has worldwide impacts," they said.</p><p>"It drives the global ocean conveyor belt, a constant system of deep-ocean circulation which transfers oceanic heat around the planet, and its melting ice sheet adds to global sea-level rise."</p><p>Co-author Dana Bergstrom said the hot summer could affect local populations positively at first, but could also lead to drought and heat stress on species adapted for the cold.</p><p>"Most life exists in small ice-free oases in Antarctica, and depends on melting snow and ice for their water supply," said Bergstrom, a principal scientist at the Australian Antarctic Division.</p><p>While an increase in meltwater flooding associated with higher temperatures could provide extra water to such ecosystems – helping them on a short-term basis - it could also dislodge plants and radically change the composition of communities of invertebrates and microbes.</p><p>"Based on our experience from previous anomalous hot summers in Antarctica we can expect a multitude of biological impacts to be reported in coming years, illustrating how climate change is impacting even the most remote areas of the planet," the study said.</p><p>Contributors to the research came from Australia's University of Wollongong, the University of Tasmania and the government agency Australian Antarctic Division.</p>
<p class=""><em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/antarctica-experiences-first-known-heat-wave/a-52963959?maca=en-VAM_volltext_ecowatch-28485-html-copypaste" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Deutsche Welle</a>.</em></p>From Your Site Articles
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Antarctica's Denman Glacier. NASA
Antarctica's Denman Canyon is the deepest gorge on the Earth's surface, and, if the ice inside it melted, it could raise sea levels by almost five feet.
<p>Now, research published in <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2019GL086291" target="_blank">Geophysical Research Letters</a> Monday looked at how close that might be to happening and found that the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/glaciers" target="_self">glacier</a> had retreated five kilometers (approximately three miles) in the last 22 years, according to a <a href="https://news.uci.edu/2020/03/23/east-antarcticas-denman-glacier-has-retreated-almost-3-miles-over-last-22-years/" target="_blank">University of California Irvine (UCI) press release</a>.</p><p>"If warm water continues to induce high rates of ice melt near the glacier grounding zone, the potential exists for Denman Glacier to undergo a rapid and irreversible retreat, with major consequences for <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/sea-level-rise" target="_self">sea level rise</a>," the researchers concluded.</p><p>The study, carried out by scientists at UCI and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is the most detailed of the glacier to date. It found that it has lost 268 billion tons of ice between 1979 and 2017. It also noticed that the glacier's grounding line ― the point where the ice begins to flow into the ocean ― had retreated asymmetrically, falling back mostly on the Western side.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-52007637" target="_blank">BBC News</a> explained why:</p><blockquote>The reason, the scientists can now determine, is a buried ridge under the eastern flank which is pinning and protecting that side of the glacier. In contrast, the western flank features a narrow but sizeable trough that would allow warm ocean water to erode the grounding line and push it backwards.<br><br>This potentially is an Achilles heel. The further inland the glacier reaches, the deeper its bed - which is a geometry that has been demonstrated to favour more and more melting. If a lot of warm ocean water can find its way to the front of Denman, the opportunity is there to melt out its ice in a significant way.</blockquote><p>NASA's Dr. Virginia Brancato told BBC News it was impossible to say how fast that ice would melt and that the narrowness of the channel that housed the glacier might also slow down its retreat.</p>
<p>"At present, it is critical to collect more data, and closely and more frequently monitor the future evolution of the glacier," she told BBC News.</p><p>The findings also reflect growing concern among researchers about East Antarctica, where the glacier is located. The region is considered more stable than fast-melting West Antarctica, but that is changing.</p><p>"East Antarctica has long been thought to be less threatened, but as glaciers such as Denman have come under closer scrutiny by the cryosphere science community, we are now beginning to see evidence of potential marine ice sheet instability in this region," study co-author and UCI scientist Eric Rignot said in the university release. "The ice in West Antarctica has been melting faster in recent years, but the sheer size of Denman Glacier means that its potential impact on long-term sea level rise is just as significant."</p>
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Seymour Island with icebergs in front of it in the Antarctic Sound. On Feb. 9 scientists measured a temperature of 69.35 on the island. Richard McManus / Moment / Getty Images
The Antarctic region just recorded a temperature higher than 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time.
<p>Brazilian scientists measured a temperature of 20.75 degrees Celsius (approximately 69.35 degrees Fahrenheit) on Seymour Island Feb. 9, <a href="https://www.afp.com/en/news/15/antarctica-registers-record-temperature-over-20-c-doc-1oz4pp5" target="_blank">one of the researchers told AFP Thursday</a>. </p><p>"We'd never seen a temperature this high in <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/antarctica" target="_self">Antarctica</a>," Brazilian scientist Carlos Schaefer told AFP.</p><p>The record was broken three days after the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/antarctica-hottest-temperature-record-2645059660.html?rebelltitem=1#rebelltitem1" target="_self">Antarctic continent recorded its highest temperature to date</a> at a balmy 18.3 degrees Celsius (approximately 64.9 degrees Fahrenheit). That measure was taken at Argentina's Esperanza station on the Antarctic peninsula that extends north towards South America. </p><p>The Brazilian reading was taken on one of the islands that extends off that peninsula, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-51500692?intlink_from_url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science_and_environment&link_location=live-reporting-story" target="_blank">according to BBC News</a>. It breaks the previous record for the entire Antarctic region, <a href="https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/wmo-verifies-highest-temperatures-antarctic-region" target="_blank">defined by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)</a> as all the land and ice south of 60 degrees. The previous record for the region of 19.8 degrees Celsius (approximately 67.6 degrees Fahrenheit) was recorded in 1982 on Signy Island.</p><p>Schaefer was careful to point out that the temperature reading was not part of a larger study and so could not be used as evidence of a climate trend.</p><p>"We can't use this to anticipate climatic changes in the future. It's a data point," he told AFP. "It's simply a signal that something different is happening in that area."</p><p>However, Antarctica as a whole has warmed by almost three degrees Celsius over the past 50 years, according to WMO data reported by BBC News. During that time, about 87 percent of the glaciers on its western coast have retreated. The region also just recorded its warmest January on record. </p><p>Schaefer works as part of Brazil's Terrantar project that studies 23 sites in Antarctica. Temperatures on the peninsula, the South Shetland Islands and the James Ross archipelago cooled during the first decade of the 21st century, and then began to rise quickly, he <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/13/antarctic-temperature-rises-above-20c-first-time-record" target="_blank">told The Guardian</a>. </p><p>"We are seeing the warming trend in many of the sites we are monitoring, but we have never seen anything like this," he said.</p><p>The peninsula and its surrounding islands have been the areas of Antarctica most impacted by the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/" target="_self">climate crisis</a> so far, which means they might indicate how the rest of the region will react.</p><p>"It is important to have sentinel areas like the South Shetlands and the Antarctic peninsula because they can anticipate the developments that will happen in the future, the near future," Schaefer told The Guardian.</p><p>If all of the ice in Antarctica were to melt, it would cause 50 to 60 meters (approximately 164 to 197 feet) of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/sea-level-rise" target="_self">sea level rise</a>. This would take centuries, however. In the nearer term, scientists predict 30 to 110 centimeters (approximately 12 to 43 inches) of sea level rise by 2100, depending on how successfully greenhouse gas emissions are reduced and how the ice reacts. </p>
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Grounded icebergs seen in Northeast Greenland, Polar regions, the region of the 79 North Glacier studied by scientists to find warm ocean currents beneath are carving away the ice sheet. Michael Nolan / robertharding / Getty Images
The Greenland ice sheet is melting faster than ever recorded in modern history. New research finds that the world's second-largest ice deposit is not just melting from the surface but from below as well, which adds a new twist to consider when predicting global sea level rise.
<p>The <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/Arctic" rel="noopener noreferrer">Arctic</a> ice sheet stores large quantities of frozen water extending 1.7 million square kilometers (656,000 square miles) long, <a href="https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/quickfacts/icesheets.html" target="_blank">according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center</a>. In recent years it has seen unprecedented melting — seven times faster today than in the 1990s — that is likely to be intensified by the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-crisis" rel="noopener noreferrer">climate crisis</a>. Scientists estimate that if the Greenland Ice Sheet completely melted, sea levels would rise by about 20 feet. </p>
<p>Researchers have long known that surface melt occurs from exposure to the sun and rising temperatures, but Arctic scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (<a href="https://www.awi.de/en.html" target="_blank">AWI</a>) in Germany have now determined that an underwater current of warmer <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/water">water</a> is carving a destructive path below the surface.</p><p>To come to their findings, the team took to the 79 North Glacier, a 50-mile-long "<a href="https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/glossary/term/glacier-tongue" target="_blank">tongue</a>" of floating ice that has slid into the ocean and floats on the surface while remaining connected to the land ice. In the last two decades the 79 North Glacier has seen dramatic loss of both its mass and thickness. The first-ever extensive ship-based survey of the ocean floor revealed an underwater current more than a mile-wide arriving from the Atlantic Ocean, bringing heat into contact with the glacier to accelerate its melting. </p>
<p>"The reason for the intensified melting is now clear," researcher Janin Schaffer <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-02/awih-hto012920.php" target="_blank">said</a>, <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-02/awih-hto012920.php" rel="noopener noreferrer">according to EurekAlert!</a><a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/aboutus.php" target="_blank"></a>. "Because the warm water current is larger, substantially more warmth now makes its way under the ice tongue, second for second."</p><p>Schaffer and her team also found what is known as a bathymetric sill, which acts as a dam to water flowing over the seafloor. As water builds up against this barrier, it grows until eventually rushing over and coming into contact with the tongue, further melting the ice from below. </p><p>"The readings indicate that here, too, a bathymetric sill near the seafloor accelerates warm water toward the glacier. Apparently, the intensive melting on the underside of the ice at several sites throughout Greenland is largely produced by the form of the seafloor,"Schaffer said. </p><p>Writing in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0529-x" target="_blank">Nature Geoscience</a>, the study authors add that similar effects were seen at other parts of the Greenland Ice Sheet as well. The researchers say that their findings may help to more accurately gauge the total amount of meltwater lost from the ice sheet each year.</p>
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Thwaites Glacier currently contributes four percent of yearly sea level rise. NASA / James Yungel
Scientists have discovered record warm water beneath Antarctica's "doomsday glacier" for the first time, leading to concerns for the glacier whose collapse could contribute nearly a meter (approximately 3 feet) to global sea level rise.
<p>The findings are part of the <a href="https://thwaitesglacier.org/projects/melt" target="_blank">International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration</a> — a UK and U.S.-led research expedition to better understand how quickly the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica might collapse. On Jan. 8 and 9, researchers drilled a bore hole through the ice, then measured the waters beneath for the first time on Jan. 10 and 11, according to <a href="https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2020/january/scientists-find-record-warm-water-in-antarctica--pointing-to-cau.html" target="_blank">New York University</a> (NYU). They recorded temperatures more than two degrees Celsius above freezing.</p>
<p>"Warm waters in this part of the world, as remote as they may seem, should serve as a warning to all of us about the potential dire changes to the planet brought about by climate change," researcher David Holland, who directs NYU's Environmental Fluid Dynamics Laboratory and NYU Abu Dhabi's Center for Global Sea Level Change, said in the university press release. "If these waters are causing glacier melt in Antarctica, resulting changes in sea level would be felt in more inhabited parts of the world."</p>
<p>The Thwaites Glacier has been called the "doomsday" glacier and the "most important" glacier in the world, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51097309" target="_blank">BBC News explained</a>. The glacier, roughly the size of Britain or Florida, already contributes four percent a year to global sea level rise. Not only that, it acts as a stop on the rest of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which could raise sea levels by more than three meters (approximately 10 feet).</p><p>"It certainly has a big impact on our U.S. coast and in many areas," Twila Moon of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado Boulder, who is not involved with the Thwaites project, told <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/29/climate/thwaites-glacier-melting-antarctica.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&fbclid=IwAR177XLLQRk0TWnyrvxz9r6ubzjwCT2O28qumlzSsvaqp3vWvz7b983nhiQ" target="_blank">The New York Times</a> of the glacier.</p>
<p>While satellite data shows that the glacier is rapidly retreating, there has not been an on-the-ground investigation of the glacier until now, BBC News reported. Partly, this is because of how difficult it is to reach. West Antarctica is the stormiest place on Earth, and the glacier is more than 1,000 miles from the closest research station.</p><p>Researchers specifically took measurements from the glacier's grounding zone. That's the place where the glacier's ice moves off of bedrock and into the sea, NYU explained. Thwaites is especially precarious because the bed it rests on slopes downward, according to BBC News. As warm water melts the ice between the glacier's surface and the bedrock, the glacier retreats and the ice on top is more likely to break off.</p><p>"The fear is these processes will just accelerate," University of Oregon glaciologist Dr. Kiya Riverman told BBC News. "It is a feedback loop, a vicious cycle."</p><p>To better understand the grounding zone, the scientists drilled a 600 meter (approximately 1,968.5 feet) hole through the ice and used a device to measure the ocean's temperature and turbulence — a sign of the glacier's fresh water mixing with the salt water of the ocean. This is the first time scientists have measured the ocean beneath Thwaites through a bore hole, and their results so far show they were right to be worried.</p><p>"The fact that such warm water was just now recorded by our team along a section of Thwaites grounding zone where we have known the glacier is melting suggests that it may be undergoing an unstoppable retreat that has huge implications for global sea level rise," Holland told NYU.</p>
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Build Your Own Solutions to the Climate Crisis With the En-Roads Climate Simulator
27 January
Climate
Slowing deforestation, planting more trees, and cutting emissions of non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gases like methane could cut another 0.5 degrees C or more off global warming by 2100. South_agency / E+ / Getty Images
Killer hurricanes, devastating wildfires, melting glaciers, and sunny-day flooding in more and more coastal areas around the world have birthed a fatalistic view cleverly dubbed by Mary Annaïse Heglar of the Natural Resources Defense Council as "de-nihilism." One manifestation: An increasing number of people appear to have grown doubtful about the possibility of staving-off climate disaster. However, a new interactive tool from a climate think tank and MIT Sloan shows that humanity could still meet the goals of the Paris agreement and limit global warming.
<p>By itself, a carbon tax rising to around $200 per ton of <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/emissions" rel="noopener noreferrer">emissions</a> would bring the world about halfway to the Paris goal, according to the <a href="https://www.climateinteractive.org/tools/en-roads/" target="_blank">En-ROADS interactive tool</a> developed by the MIT Sloan School of Management and Climate Interactive. Countries would also need to implement other aggressive climate policies targeting the many different sectors of the economy that generate large-scale greenhouse gas emissions. The tool allows a user to figure out how:<em></em></p>
<ul><li>civilization must change the fuel mix supplying the world's energy and boost efficiency</li><li>the extent to which more buildings and vehicles must be electrified</li><li>strategies could help reduce deforestation and how to plant more trees of the optimum species at the right locations</li><li>carbon capture technology could be relied upon to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere</li></ul>
Carbon Taxes Seen as the Most Effective Tool
<p>According to Climate Interactive's climate and energy lead, Ellie Johnston, "Behind En-ROADS is a system dynamics model that weaves the interdependencies and feedbacks of our global climate system with the actions that we need to take globally to address climate change."</p><p>The simulation begins with a default business-as-usual scenario leading to 4.1 degrees Celsius (7.3 degrees Fahrenheit) global warming above pre-industrial temperatures by the year 2100. This outcome is essentially a worst-case scenario, assuming that current worldwide climate policies and pledges (which would limit warming to <a href="https://climateactiontracker.org/global/temperatures/" target="_blank">approximately 3 degrees C</a>, or 5.4 degrees F) are not successfully implemented. For context, the international Paris agreement set a target of no more than 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) global warming, whereas 3 to 4 degrees C warming would likely result in disastrous <a href="https://skepticalscience.com/climate-best-to-worst-case-scenarios.html" target="_blank">climate change consequences</a>.</p><p>In the En-ROADS simulator, taxing carbon pollution is the single most effective way to bridge the gap between business-as-usual warming and the Paris target. A strong global carbon tax that eventually rises to around $200 per ton of carbon dioxide would reduce global warming from 4 to approximately 3 degrees C by 2100, erasing half of the difference between the two scenarios. The carbon tax makes already-expensive coal even costlier, accelerating its replacement by renewables, and also increases consumer demand for more energy-efficient products that become comparatively cheap as fossil fuel energy prices rise. According to <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/FM/Issues/2019/09/12/fiscal-monitor-october-2019#Mitigating%20Climate%20Change" target="_blank">a recent International Monetary Fund report</a>, a carbon tax of $75 per ton would more than triple the price of coal and increase natural gas prices by 70 percent, with gasoline prices rising by about 70 cents per gallon.</p><p>A growing body of climate economics research supports a robust carbon tax. For example, <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/116/42/20886" target="_blank">an October 2019 study</a> in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences focusing on risk and uncertainty concluded that the appropriate carbon tax is more than $100 per ton of carbon dioxide, most economically efficient if immediately implemented at that high price. As co-author Gernot Wagner at New York University described their results, "taking risk and uncertainty seriously — and applying standard tools from financial economics — dramatically increases today's carbon prices. It also reverses carbon price paths over time: high today, declining over time."</p><p>Experts for some time have debated the best way to structure a carbon tax. Some argue that the price should start low and increase over time in order to give consumers a period to adjust, thus making the tax more politically palatable. The new PNAS study argues that from a risk management perspective, the carbon tax should start high because emissions will then fall quickly, reducing the risk of catastrophic outcomes. As Wagner put it, "folks in 2300 will know more about the climate in 2300 than we know today. Uncertainty resolves itself over time." In the meantime, the reasoning follows, prudent risk management requires taking aggressive steps to avoid a possible climate catastrophe.</p>
<p>However, there are limits to how effectively carbon taxes alone can cut emissions. <a href="https://energypolicy.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/file-uploads/EICDA_CGEP-Report.pdf" target="_blank">An assessment</a> by scientists at Columbia University and the Rhodium Group of a specific carbon tax bill introduced to Congress — the <a href="https://energyinnovationact.org/" target="_blank">Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act</a> — found that its rising carbon price would reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 37 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. That result would more than double the 16 percent that American emissions are anticipated to fall during that same period under current policies. However, the analysis found that the bulk of these emissions reductions would come from the electricity sector, while carbon pollution from other sectors like transportation would remain relatively high. For example, the resulting increase in gasoline prices by around $1 per gallon on its own would be insufficient to dramatically reduce American vehicular fuel consumption.</p>
Complementary Policies Are Needed
<p>Similarly, the En-ROADS model also shows that a carbon tax alone would dramatically reduce the share of energy generated by coal, leading to continued high emissions as a result of more oil and gas production.</p><p>Oil consumption can be reduced in the En-ROADS model by strengthening vehicle fuel efficiency and electrification policies. In the real world, this approach translates to policies like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy" target="_blank">vehicle fuel economy standards</a>, which can mandate increased efficiency and thus accelerate the transition to electric vehicles. Projects to improve and electrify public transportation systems can also reduce demand for oil. Natural gas consumption can similarly be reduced by expanding energy efficiency and electrification of buildings and industrial activities. Together, the En-ROADS model suggests that these steps could curb global warming by one-half a degree Celsius.</p><p>Slowing deforestation, planting more trees, and cutting emissions of non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gases like methane could cut another 0.5 degrees C or more off global warming by 2100. Combined with a carbon tax, these policies could achieve the Paris climate targets, if implemented globally. However, the En-ROADS tool illustrates just how difficult it will be to meet those goals, and how many different large-scale policies must be implemented to do so.</p><p>Meeting the Paris targets would require that countries around the world soon begin implementing aggressive climate policies targeting the many different sectors of the economy that generate large-scale greenhouse gas emissions. Pricing carbon pollution is one of the single most effective steps to curb emissions, but achieving the Paris goals will require additional complementary policies.</p>
<p><em>Reposted with permission from </em><em><a href="https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/01/en-roads-climate-solutions-simulator/" rel="noopener noreferrer">Yale Climate Connections</a>.</em><a href="https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/01/en-roads-climate-solutions-simulator/" rel="noopener noreferrer"></a></p>From Your Site Articles
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200 Years of Exploring Antarctica — the World’s Coldest, Most Forbidding and Most Peaceful Continent
27 January
Science
The Antarctic Peninsula on Feb. 28, 2019. Daniel Enchev / Flickr
By Dan Morgan
Antarctica is the remotest part of the world, but it is a hub of scientific discovery, international diplomacy and environmental change. It was officially discovered 200 years ago, on Jan. 27, 1820, when members of a Russian expedition sighted land in what is now known as the Fimbul Ice Shelf on the continent's east side.
<p>Early explorers were drawn there by the mythology of <a href="https://lib-dbserver.princeton.edu/visual_materials/maps/websites/pacific/pacific-ocean/terra-australis.html" target="_blank">Terra Australis</a>, a vast southern continent that scholars imagined for centuries as a counterweight to the Northern Hemisphere. Others sought economic bounty from <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0032247416000644" target="_blank">hunting whales and seals</a>, or the glory of conquering the planet's last wilderness. Still others wanted to <a href="https://www.bgs.ac.uk/research/highlights/2012/terraNova.html" target="_blank">understand Earth's magnetic fields</a> in order to better navigate the seas.</p><p>I am a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=2atjAwMAAAAJ&hl=en" target="_blank">geologist</a> who specializes in understanding the timing and extent of past ice ages. Much of my work focuses on the glacial history of Antarctica, and I've been privileged to conduct five field seasons of research there.</p><p>For the next two years I'll be working with a field team made up entirely of undergraduate students from Vanderbilt University to determine whether the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Antarctic_Ice_Sheet" target="_blank">East Antarctic Ice Sheet</a> changes flow patterns as it changes shape. All of the research these budding scientists conduct will be done under the auspices of the <a href="https://www.ats.aq/index_e.html" target="_blank">Antarctic Treaty</a>, a global agreement that promotes scientific cooperation and environmental protection.</p>
<h2>Frozen but Abundant</h2><p>Antarctica separated from South America 35 million years ago, and its climate started to change. It began to grow <a href="https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/quickfacts/icesheets.html" target="_blank">ice sheets</a> – masses of glacial land ice covering thousands of square miles. As plate tectonics shifted other continents, Antarctica became colder and drier. For the past 14 million years, it has been the frigid continent that persists today.</p><p>Antarctica is the only continent that was literally discovered, because it has no native human population. British explorer Sir James Cook circumnavigated the continent in 1772-1775, but saw only some outlying islands. Cook <a href="https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-JOD-00020/1" target="_blank">concluded</a> that if there were any land, it would be "condemned to everlasting regidity by Nature, never to yield to the warmth of the sun."</p><p>Cook also reported that Antarctic waters were rich with nutrients and <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/wildlife">wildlife</a>. This drew sealers and whalers, mainly from England and the U.S., who hunted the region's fur seals and elephant seals to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0032247416000644" target="_blank">near-extinction</a> in the following decades. This hunting spree led to the discovery of the Antarctic mainland and its ice sheets, the largest in the world.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjYyMTMxOC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0MDY0MTI4N30.DpM_jVKSqvQlJFmIhmsEPPvDYnOcHftDmYqk8-a7AgY/img.jpg?width=980" id="b9767" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="67367dfa973727d67b54e074149b6f44" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Antarctica is mostly covered by ice sheets on land and fringed by floating ice shelves. NOAA
<h2>Reading the Ice</h2><p>Today the combined East and West Antarctic ice sheets hold 90% of the world's ice, enough to raise global sea levels by <a href="https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/quickfacts/icesheets.html" target="_blank">roughly 200 feet (60 meters) if it all melted</a>. Antarctica is the coldest, highest, driest, windiest, brightest, and yes, iciest continent on Earth. And 200 years of research has shown that it is a key component of Earth's climate system.</p><p>Despite the appearance that it is an unchanging, freeze-dried landscape, my research and work by many others has shown that the East Antarctica Ice Sheet does slowly <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/esp.2039" target="_blank">thin and thicken over millions of years</a>. Interestingly, my data also suggest that as the ice advances and retreats, it moves in <a href="https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2016AM/webprogram/Paper285013.html" target="_blank">the same patterns each time</a>. Put another way, the ice flows over the same land each time it advances.</p><p>While East Antarctica adds and loses ice slowly, it is so large that it is a <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/116/4/1095" target="_blank">major contributor to sea level rise</a>. Understanding how the ice has changed in the past is key to predicting how much and how fast it will melt in the coming years.</p><p>These questions are especially important in West Antarctica, where the bottom of the ice sheet is below sea level, making it very susceptible to changes in sea level and ocean temperature. By itself, the West Antarctic ice sheet has the potential to raise sea level by <a href="https://www.the-cryosphere.net/7/375/2013/" target="_blank">16 feet (5 meters) if it collapses</a>.</p><p>As <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/climate-change">climate change</a> raises global sea levels, parts of the West Antarctica Ice Sheet, such as the <a href="https://thwaitesglacier.org/" target="_blank">Thwaites</a> and <a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/pine-island" target="_blank">Pine Island Glaciers</a>, are particularly vulnerable to collapse. At the end of the last ice age, parts of West Antarctica thinned by an average of <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/299/5603/99" target="_blank">1.5 to 3 feet (0.5 - 1 meters) per year</a>. Today with GPS, satellite and airborne measurements, scientists are seeing parts of West Antarctica thin by <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GL060111" target="_blank">3 to 20 feet (1 to 6 meters) per year</a>.</p>
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ce3d9d95770bb88b75dab3921d4ac1a5"><iframe lazy-loadable="true" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YRe1ymYR45k?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>
<p>We also know from the geological record that this ice sheet is capable of rapid collapses, and has sometimes thinned at rates in excess of <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/343/6174/999.abstract" target="_blank">30 feet (10 meters) per year</a>. Recent models show sea level could rise by <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nature17145" target="_blank">1 meter by 2100 and 15 meters by 2500</a> if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise at current rates and the ice sheet experiences a rapid collapse, as it has in the past.</p>
<h2>Finding Inspiration in Scientific Diplomacy</h2><p>Despite the potential for environmental disaster in Antarctica, the continent also offers evidence that nations can collaborate to find solutions. The <a href="https://www.scar.org/policy/antarctic-treaty-system/" target="_blank">Antarctic Treaty System</a> is the world's premier example of peaceful and scientific international cooperation.</p><p>This landmark accord, signed in 1961, sets aside Antarctica for peaceful and scientific purposes and recognizes no land claims on the continent. It also was the first non-nuclear accord ever signed, barring use of Antarctica for nuclear weapons testing or disposal of radioactive waste.</p><p>The great Antarctic explorer <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/shackleton_ernest.shtml" target="_blank">Sir Ernest Shackleton</a> said that "optimism is true moral courage," and the authors of the Antarctic Treaty were certainly courageous optimists. They were encouraged by the success of the 1957-1958 <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/International-Geophysical-Year" target="_blank">International Geophysical Year</a>, a worldwide program of scientific research during which 12 countries built over 50 bases in Antarctica, including <a href="https://www.nsf.gov/geo/opp/support/mcmurdo.jsp" target="_blank">McMurdo Station</a> and the <a href="https://www.nsf.gov/geo/opp/support/southp.jsp" target="_blank">Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station</a>.</p>
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjYyMTMyNS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTU5OTU4MDQ1NX0.ZOlVVKoamPniRPz-7TpcaLWxkOy5JdVs831kjjNces4/img.jpg?width=980" id="08b0a" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="d6203b818d7ce7e9a395971aedcd71d1" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Flags of the 12 original Antarctic Treaty member countries at McMurdo Station, Antarctica. U.S. Antarctic Program / Rob Jones
<p>Under the treaty, scientists from North Korea, Russia and China can freely visit U.S. research stations in Antarctica. Researchers from India and Pakistan willingly share their data about Antarctic <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/glaciers">glaciers</a>.</p><p>Thanks to the Antarctic Treaty, 10% of Earth's land surface is protected as a wildlife and wilderness refuge. I have set foot in places in Antarctica where I know no one has ever been before, and the treaty sets areas aside that no one will ever visit. Antarctica's landscapes are unlike anywhere else on Earth. The best comparison may be the Moon.</p><p>Yet in these stark environments, <a href="https://www.bas.ac.uk/about/antarctica/wildlife/" target="_blank">life finds a way to persist</a> – showing that there are solutions to even the most daunting challenges. If Antarctica has taught us anything in 200 years, it's that we can cooperate and collaborate to overcome problems. As <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/profiles/WTfFSJCJ5jkqnGPm4fqHyy/ernest-shackleton" target="_blank">Ernest Shackleton once said</a>, "Difficulties are just things to overcome, after all."</p>
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<em>Dan Morgan is an associate dean and principal senior lecturer in earth and environmental sciences at Vanderbilt University.<br/>
</em><em>Disclosure statement: Dan Morgan receives funding from the National Science Foundation.</em>
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<em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://theconversation.com/200-years-of-exploring-antarctica-the-worlds-coldest-most-forbidding-and-most-peaceful-continent-129607" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>.</em>
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Cracker Lake, Glacier National Park, Montana. Jacob W. Frank / NPS / Flickr
By Jason Bittel
High up in the mountains of Montana's Glacier National Park, there are two species of insect that only a fly fishermen or entomologist would probably recognize. Known as stoneflies, these aquatic bugs are similar to dragonflies and mayflies in that they spend part of their lives underwater before emerging onto the land, where they transform into winged adults less than a half inch long. However, unlike those other species, stoneflies do their thing only where cold, clean waters flow.
<p>In fact, these flies live pretty much exclusively downstream from glaciers, snowfields, and frigid alpine springs, and they have evolved a nifty suite of <a href="https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/winter-stoneflies-sure-are-supercool/" target="_blank">antifreeze compounds</a> to make it all possible. It's a pretty cool trick — one that has helped the insects survive for <a href="http://tolweb.org/Plecoptera" target="_blank">hundreds of millions of years</a> in frigid conditions that have sent others packing. But what makes these insects special may also be their undoing — and soon.</p><p>In November, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service added the western glacier stonefly (<em>Zapada glacier</em>) and the meltwater lednian stonefly (<em>Lednia tumana</em>) to the Endangered Species List, <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/11/21/2019-25195/endangered-and-threatened-wildlife-and-plants-threatened-species-status-for-meltwater-lednian" target="_blank">both under the designation of threatened</a>. And while the two species are extremely sensitive to pollution, as all stoneflies are, another very significant risk factor is what triggered the listing.</p>
<p>"All of the glaciers in Glacier National Park are expected to be gone by 2030," said <a href="https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/about/staff/" target="_blank">Noah Greenwald</a>, director of endangered species for the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD). Like, <em>all of them</em> all of them. <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/11/21/2019-25195/endangered-and-threatened-wildlife-and-plants-threatened-species-status-for-meltwater-lednian" target="_blank">Ten years from now.</a> And without giant chunks of ice to chill their streams and supply life-sustaining meltwater, the stoneflies cannot exist.</p><p>"In 1900, there were 150 glaciers in Glacier National Park," said Greenwald. "There are now 25."</p><p><a href="https://www.usgs.gov/centers/norock/science/retreat-glaciers-glacier-national-park?qt-science_center_objects=0#qt-science_center_objects" target="_blank">According to the U.S. Geological Survey</a>, the disappearance of the park's glaciers could also bring more <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/wildfires">wildfires</a> to the region and negatively affect native trout species, which have also evolved to live in cold water. But <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-change/">climate change</a> cometh first for the stoneflies, and that right soon.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjYyMDAwNi9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYwOTc4NTUxOX0.BF_I0nrpZ0fokYAO1sIH-BEWW4b1vcfDkHSnajF2xRU/img.jpg?width=980" id="4c96f" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="8517b47b0319875027bded6997464a97" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
From left: meltwater lednian stonefly (Lednia tumana); a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey looks for aquatic insects in an alpine stream at Glacier National Park.
Glacier NPS
<p>How, you may wonder, would an Endangered Species Act listing help these seemingly doomed species?</p><p>Well, the act would have previously required the FWS to designate critical habitat for the stoneflies. But the Trump administration announced changes this summer that allow the agency to opt out of declaring critical habitat in cases when "it may not be prudent" — as the FWS phrased it in the <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/11/21/2019-25195/endangered-and-threatened-wildlife-and-plants-threatened-species-status-for-meltwater-lednian" target="_blank">stoneflies' entry into the Federal Register</a>. Cases, ahem, linked to climate change, for instance.</p><p>This is akin to saying climate change is a problem without a solution. But there <em>is</em> a scientific solution, of course. We need to cut carbon emissions. As much and as quickly as possible. The fact that the Trump administration hasn't made any meaningful effort to do so does not mean that it is impossible by definition. Or that we should simply give up on the stoneflies and their habitat, and so, so much more.</p><p>The CBD and the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation have been petitioning for the western glacier stonefly's listing since 2010, and WildEarth Guardians has been pushing for federal protections for the meltwater lednian stonefly since 2007. And while the non-designation of critical habitat is disappointing, Greenwald said the FWS still must develop a recovery plan for both species, though it's unclear at this stage what that will look like. But the listings are important for another reason as well.</p><img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMjYyMDAwNy9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzOTA4Mjk0NH0.9p81QO0kUj9SwYp5XCIIVzWaKNpNUOSK5wfW7vQyQk4/img.jpg?width=980" id="2182d" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="fc9a438429c7f74f583322bb4cc14695" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" />
Clockwise from top: a meltwater stonefly at Glacier National Park; close-up of two meltwater lednian stoneflies; close-up of western glacier stonefly (Zapada glacier)
Glacier NPS / Flickr. Western glacier stonefly: Joe Giersch / USGS
<p>"Listing provides information to people," said Greenwald. "Really, it raises the alarm bells in terms of climate change."</p><p>Of course, the stoneflies themselves have a stake in all of this too. Every species has an <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/should-we-really-save-devils-hole-pupfish" target="_blank">inherent right to exist</a>, and what's more, their loss would ripple throughout the ecosystems they inhabit. Stonefly nymphs <a href="http://fieldguide.mt.gov/speciesDetail.aspx?elcode=IIPLE0U060" target="_blank">shred leaf material</a> and other aquatic detritus, which helps unlock nutrients and facilitates their spread throughout the ecosystem. Stoneflies also serve as yummy snacks for amphibians, other insects, and the trout that fishermen lust after. And after the adults emerge from their cool waters to breed, they die, providing yet another buffet for other critters. In short, stoneflies are a critical base layer of the local food web.</p><p>In the end, the real story of the stoneflies is one of urgency. The extinctions and other climate-fueled changes scientists keep warning us about aren't like some far-off, Nostradamus predictions. They'll be here before we know it. In fact, we are already watching them unfold.</p><p>"I think for anyone out there who's really doubting how rapidly our world is changing, how serious the threat climate change is, they should pay attention to these stoneflies," said Greenwald.</p>
<p> <em>Reposted with permission from <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/glacier-national-park-ice-isnt-only-thing-thats-disappearing" target="_blank">onEarth</a>.</em><em></em></p>
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