Antarctica is Heating Up Ever Faster. By Scott Canon, McClatchy, March 8, 2009. "Even as changing climate brings more moisture, and ice, to Antarctica's center, on its edges the frozen continent is becoming less so. Melting skyscrapers of ice crash into the ocean at ever faster rates. That's raising sea levels, disrupting ocean food chains and reducing the region's ability to moderate the planet's climate. Climate scientists once were befuddled about why Antarctica seemed, if anything, to be cooling while the rest of the world got toastier. It turns out the bottom of the world has been warming after all. 'More is happening than we thought, and it's happening faster,' said Douglas Martinson, who studies the impact of polar oceans on global climate at Columbia University. Average winter temperatures on the Antarctica peninsula -- changing more than the rest of the continent -- have risen 11 degrees since 1950. That's five times the global warm-up and disastrous to the ice shelves that hang over water and act as corks to bottle up glaciers on land."
2009-03-09
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