A Pandora's Box of Problems Waiting to Open

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What comes to mind when you think of Antarctica? Far away, penguins, maybe a few scientists, and……ice. Antarctica is a continent located towards the Southern Pole and covered, completely, in ice. The ice has come and gone throughout history as the result of massive changes in climate and now, something is happening to it. The ice is depleting, though not as fast as the Arctic Ocean, and not quite the way you would think. And if we accept that it is depleting, what happens as the climate continues to change? What happens to our coastal cities when the sea levels rise? What happens to weather patterns in the Southern Oceans? Before we can answer those questions, we need to understand what’s going on in Antarctica right now.

Ice is Increasing?
Some of you may have heard that all this talk about global warming is a scam. Antarctic Ice is actually increasing! They’re all lying to us! Now that is partially true. Antarctica is gaining sea ice. But it’s losing land ice. How does that work? As land ice from the Antarctic ice shelves melts due to increasing temperatures, it spreads out into the ocean and then rises due to its low density and freezes. The land ice decreases and contributes to the increase in sea ice. The most recent estimate concludes that Antarctic land ice decreased by an average of 70 giga-tonnes per year, with the estimates beginning in 1992 and going to 2011 (King, 2013). The chart to the right shows monthly changes in Antarctic ice mass, in giga-tonnes, measured by NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites from 2003 to 2011 (NASA, nd.). In addition, none of this is due to melting on the surface, so it’s more difficult to understand. In East Antarctica, the ice is growing slightly, possible d...

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...ries [Graph]. Retrieved from http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Grace/news/grace20121129.html#.U2kYXZ5dWiB.
National Snow and Ice Data Center, & National Aeronautics and Space Administration (n.d.).
Wilkins Ice Shelf breaking up [Photograph]. Retrieved from https://nsidc.org/news/press/20080325_Wilkins.html.
Pattero, A. (n.d.). Flood in Venice, Italy [Photograph].
Scambos, T., Bauer, R., & NSIDC (n.d.). Mt. Erebus rising above the ice-covered continent
[Photograph]. Retrieved from http://http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/quickfacts/icesheets.html.
Sigmond, M., & Fyfe, J. C. (2014). The Antarctic Sea Ice Response to the Ozone Hole in
Climate Models. Journal Of Climate, 27(3), 1336-1342. doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00590.1
Zhang, J. (2014). Modeling the Impact of Wind Intensification on Antarctic Sea Ice
Volume. Journal Of Climate, 27(1), 202-214. doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00139.1

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