A few excerpts below from an excellent article that explains what is happening to sea ice around Antarctica, and what it means for the global climate and for our future...
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Until recently, Antarctic sea ice fluctuated between relatively stable summer minimums and winter maximums. But after a record minimum in 2016, things began to shift. Two record lows soon followed, including the smallest minimum ever in February 2023.
As winter began in March of that year, scientists hoped the ice cover would rebound. But what happened instead astonished them: Antarctic ice experienced six months of record lows. At winter's peak in July, the continent was missing a chunk of ice bigger than Western Europe.
"We all thought that the minimum was as bad as it was going to get; it was 2023, not 2070," said Ariaan Purich, an Antarctic climate researcher at Monash University in Australia. "So when winter came, we were in disbelief."
Now, in 2024, the sea ice extent has reached another near-record low. A profound "regime shift" has taken place in the Antarctic, and climate scientists are racing to understand what will come next.
"When you push any part of the climate system, it has ripple effects that are felt all over the world — not necessarily immediately, but many years down the line," said Ella Gilbert, a polar climate scientist at the British Antarctic Survey. "So by pushing the system more and more and more, we're making those ripples bigger and bigger. And eventually, we're all going to feel them."
In the meantime, the obvious prescription for our ailing planetary systems still applies: urgent and deep cuts to global CO2 emissions, according to Martin Siegert, a glaciologist who led an investigation of the Antarctic's dwindling sea ice.
“The only way forward is to decarbonize, and decarbonizing as soon as possible means we’ll not see the worst possible outcomes.” Siegert said.
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FULL ARTICLE -- https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/antarctica/we-were-in-disbelief-antarctica-is-behaving-in-a-way-weve-never-seen-before-can-it-recover
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