The problem of global warming is not new, however, recent studies of American and Dutch scientists are forced to look at it entirely from a different angle. According to the results published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Antarctic ice shield in 2017 has lost more than 250 billion tons of ice, while in 1979 the losses were less than 40 million tons of ice per year.
Antarctica has become green
In the research process were taken into account, the data on 18 Antarctic regions 176 and ice plains. A large part of the mass loss occurred in West Antarctica, and another 20% on the East and the Antarctic Peninsula. In the next few decades, melting ice of Antarctica could add to a rise in Global sea level of several meters. If the ice shield of the Antarctic will be completely melted, the level rises to 57.2 meters. And, unfortunately, all there is to it.
Worried by the recent news that the Antarctic sea ice at the beginning of this year fell to 5.5 million square kilometers and is at least almost 40 years of observations. According to scientists, the record will be updated this summer.
It may seem that ice is still a lot, but in fact, losses are already catastrophic. Blame climate change, which leads to a sustained reduction of mass and area of Arctic ice.
When examining the global temperature scientists at NASA use different methods of collecting and analyzing information, analyzing it with more than a thousand weather stations across the planet. From year to year, there are periodic changes in the temperature and each subsequent year is not necessarily warmer than the previous one, but every decade the temperature will probably be higher.
Global warming over 60 years (video NASA)
Of adds fuel to the fire is the fact that the luminosity of the sun increases by 1 % every 110 million years. After the flow will increase by 10-30 %, depending on the state of our atmosphere — we will overcome a critical threshold: surface temperature rises to 100 degrees Celsius. That is, at some point the Sun will become so hot that Earth’s oceans will boil. This will be the ultimate form of global warming: the world will become so hot that water simply will be no more. Life on Earth will cease to exist, although some clever types will be able to stay in the upper, cooler layers of the atmosphere. By this time the ice of Antarctica has long been to be melted.