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Antarctica is Cracking Up and Nobody is Laughing
A sudden acceleration of melting at the bottom of the world has scientists concerned, while hope remains for a solution before critical tipping points are reached.
“We have not yet crossed these tipping points in Antarctica, which — in theory — means that the ongoing ice loss can be reduced or even stopped.”
—Petra Langebroek, PhD, research director at the Norwegian Research Center
About two-thirds of Earth’s freshwater is locked in ice on and around Antarctica. If it all melted, global seas would rise roughly 200 feet (58 meters). That’s not expected to happen anytime soon, if ever, but every new iceberg that plops into the ocean is one more drop in the bucket of threat to low-lying regions in the US and elsewhere around the world that are already being flooded by rising seas.
And there have been a lot of large drops in recent years, as icebergs bigger than most cities break free from the southernmost continent.
So scientists were moderately alarmed by new measurements showing that Antarctic sea ice — the portion that floats on the…
