#antarcitca

[nemfrog]

Animals of antarctica. . Exploring new fields. 1938. 

[rjzimmerman]

Melting of Antarctica is speeding up, worrying scientists

The melting of Antarctica is accelerating at an alarming rate, with about 3 trillion tons of ice disappearing since 1992, according to a new study.

The story:

The melting of Antarctica is accelerating at an alarming rate, with about 3 trillion tons of ice disappearing since 1992, an international team of ice experts said in a new study.

In the last quarter century, the southern-most continent's ice sheet — a key indicator of climate change — melted into enough water to cover Texas to a depth of nearly 13 feet, scientists calculated. All that water made global oceans rise about three-tenths of an inch.

From 1992 to 2011, Antarctica lost nearly 84 billion tons of ice a year. From 2012 to 2017, the melt rate increased to more than 241 billion tons a year, according to the study Wednesday in the journal Nature .

"I think we should be worried. That doesn't mean we should be desperate," said University of California Irvine's Isabella Velicogna, one of 88 co-authors. "Things are happening. They are happening faster than we expected."

Part of West Antarctica, where most of the melting occurred, "is in a state of collapse," said co-author Ian Joughin of the University of Washington.

The study is the second of assessments planned every several years by a team of scientists working with NASA and the European Space Agency. Their mission is to produce the most comprehensive look at what's happening to the world's vulnerable ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland.

Unlike single-measurement studies, this team looks at ice loss in 24 different ways using 10 to 15 satellites, as well as ground and air measurements and computer simulations, said lead author Andrew Shepherd of the University of Leeds in England.

"Under natural conditions we don't expect the ice sheet to lose ice at all," Shepherd said. "There are no other plausible signals to be driving this other than climate change."

[oaepauli-blog]

China Turns Up The Heat On Antarctica Tourism

The first commercial tourism flight has gone in!  Will the continent ever be the same?

China makes its first commercial flight to Antarctica

View On WordPress

[lichtschimmer]

Antarctica, Amundsen Scott South Pole Station - webcam

[boundless-nature]

Going to Antarctica!

Hey Guys, probably cannot post anymore pictures on tumblr in the next two months because I will join an expedition to Antarctica starting this weekend!! Of course I will bring my whole camera equipment and I will be taking a shitload of pictures! :) But I will be able to upload pictures on my website: endlessnature.de

The site is currently only in german but I will upload pictures with english descriptions, so be sure to check it out :)

We will be starting from Punta Arenas, Chile with the German research icebreaker “Polarstern” to the Southern Ocean performing several biological experiments on the effect of Climate change on Antarctic Phytoplankton. So Yeah I’m pretty thrilled :)

See you around!

[zhulonggallery]

Magnetism (Antarctica), 2009 Erika Blumenfeld 2015 4-channel synchronized video projection with audio, dimensions variable

[humanoidhistory]

If We Burned All the Fossil Fuel in the World - The New Yorker

A new paper on fossil-fuel consumption, a sort of climate modeller’s version of “Waterworld,” arrives amid a steady drip of bad news from the poles.

Meanwhile, lazy-minded politicians won’t even admit this is actually happening. Not in the future, not in some computer model -- right now.

[zhulonggallery]

Mid-Summer Full Moon (Antarctica), 2009 Erika Blumenfeld 2015

“The stars have always held my imagination. While camping under the dark starry sky as a young child, I had the opportunity to peer through through a telescope,... After several seconds of suspense and a sense that I was about to be handed some new layer of knowledge, the astronomer said to me, “that small luminous glow is another galaxy, far from the one we live in, that itself has billions of stars like ours... and maybe even planets. Every molecule in my being seemed to scintillate with amazement, even if my young mind could not yet identify all the pathways of meaning held in that one sentence. From that moment forward, I looked up at the night sky.”

-Erika Blumenfeld “Stewardship Stories,”  The Cultural Landscape Foundation