Antarctica shows signs of accelerated melting similar to the Arctic

The effects of warming in Antarctica, with faster melting and melting of ocean ice, are increasingly similar to those seen in the Arctic, which could have negative consequences for sea levels, Danish researchers warned on Friday (3).

“Antarctica was long considered more stable than the Arctic, but today the situation has changed,” scientist Ruth Mottram of the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) said in a statement.

"Sea ice is disappearing, temperatures are also rising here, glacial flows are accelerating, and meltwater is penetrating glacial crevasses, causing them to slide more quickly into the ocean," the scientist added.

"This is worrying because the southern ice sheets have a dramatic potential for sea level rise in our Nordic regions," explained the researcher, co-author of an article on the "Greenlandization of Antarctica" in the journal Nature Geoscience.

According to the scientists, whose conclusions are based on satellite observations and climate models, the term "Greenlandization" allows us to "understand and predict changes in the Antarctic environment through the prism of well-observed and understood changes in Greenland."

“We use the Greenland experiments as a laboratory to understand the same processes in Antarctica,” Mottram insisted.

“The Antarctic cryosphere reflects a dynamic environment strongly influenced by regional changes in the atmosphere and ocean, more similar to Greenland than previously reported,” the study noted.

If the Greenland ice sheet were to melt completely, oceans would rise by about seven meters, while if this were to occur in Antarctica, the rise would exceed 50 meters, the DMI noted.

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