2/24 IPY Survey - Antarctic Warming "Much More Widespread Than Was Thought" - AFP

[hatrack]

Icecaps around the North and South Poles are melting faster and in a more widespread manner than expected, raising the sea level and fuelling climate change, a scientific survey revealed Wednesday. Warming in the Antarctic was "much more widespread than was thought," while Arctic sea ice wass diminishing and the melting of Greenland's ice cover was accelerating, said the International Polar Year survey.

The frozen and often inaccessible polar regions have long been regarded as some of the most sensitive barometers of environmental change because of their influence on the world's oceans and atmosphere. Preliminary findings from the on-site survey revealed new evidence that the ocean around the Antarctic has warmed more rapidly than the global average, the World Meteorological Organisation and the International Council for Science said in a joint statement.

Shifts in temperature patterns deep underwater meawhile suggested that the continent's land ice sheet was melting faster.

"These changes are signs that global warming is affecting the Antarctic in ways not previously suspected," the statement added.

EDIT

http://www.spacedaily.com/2006/090225113248.i3id7i5p.html

[Systematic Chaos]

1. I remember calling bullshit to myself when I neared the end of "Under a Green Sky".

I laughed out loud when I read that the Greenland icecap would last about 900 years, according to that book. I knew it just wouldn't be possible no matter what we do now. I'm hard pressed to see how Greenland will have a significant ice cover in even 50 years. And when it starts to fail I believe it will be in huge chunks and the results won't be pretty.