“Although they’re of different parts of the Earth, the one thing that does show up in both images, although you’re looking at different parts of it, is Antarctica and the Southern Ocean,” says Benjamin Wallis, a glaciologist at the University of Leeds in the UK. “The Antarctic Peninsula is certainly one of the most rapidly warming parts of the Earth and 28,000km of ice shelf have collapsed in between the unique picture and the newest picture.”
Studies recommend these modifications in the ice round Antarctica are unprecedented in the final 10,000 years. Other areas of the Earth the place water exists in a stable kind – often known as the cryosphere – have been equally affected.
“We really have seen some dramatic changes,” says Petra Heil, director of science at the British Antarctic Survey. “We have now seen in both hemispheres a dramatic decrease in the seasonal sea ice cover, and in North America, Eurasia and Asia, we have seen much later seasonal snow cover, and we also see it melting earlier.”
“I think we are pretty confident based on the observations but also the numerical models to assign probably 90-95% of the change to human activities,” Heil says.
But whereas all this would possibly make for grim studying, it is value remembering that in 1968 – regardless of appearances from deep area – we had already precipitated harm to the planet.
