"Continuous And Drastic Reduction" In All NE Antarctic Peninsular Glaciers

[hatrack]

“There is a continuous and drastic reduction in all of the glaciers located in the Northeast sector of the Antarctic Peninsula,” Argentine glaciologist Pedro Skvarca told local media last week. Skvarca, a leader of the Glaciological Division of the Trans-Andean Antarctic Institute, has worked for 38 years in Argentine bases and since 1994 has been a direct observer of the melting process in the Larsen ice barrier, which once lined the Antarctic’s entire eastern coast, from North to South.

The collapse of the Larsen ice barrier started with a 1,600km loss of land mass in the summers of 1994 and 1995, in a matter of just two weeks, a phenomenon known as Larsen A. Then, in the summer of 2001, another large chunk of ice twice the size of the previous one broke off as well, coined Larsen B.

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The scientist recalled that in 1978 his U.S. colleague, John Mercer, first warned that the disintegration of the barriers at both sides of the Antarctic Peninsula would signal a very serious warming process, a phenomenon that has begun much sooner than Skvarca and most of the climate community initially expected. “These events have happened so fast that the scientific community was not prepared,” he said.

Natural phenomena like these, along with the breaking off of a colossal iceberg the size of Luxembourg from the Mertz Glacier on February 26, call attention to two issues Chile and the world must deal with in the future: how handle rising sea levels and the coming scarcity of fresh water. Skvarca’s affirmation of continued, rapid glacier melt came just days before March 22 World Water
Day event.

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http://www.santiagotimes.cl/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=18428:chile-glaciers-continue-melting-at-an-alarming-rate&catid=44:environmental&Itemid=40

[XemaSab]

1. .

[Lorien]

2. While repugs and Dems scream at each other over a bill that won't significantly

change much for most Americans, every living thing on the planet faces an increasing threat that we do even less about. Maybe we can't stop it, but slowing it would give a great many species a little more time on earth, including ours.