by A leading Antarctic scientist has urged the Albanian government to pay closer attention to sudden changes taking place on the southern continent, warning they will affect Australians in little-understood ways and that research on them has not been sufficiently funded.
The head of the Australian Center of Excellence in Antarctic Science, Professor Matt King, said it was a shame how little was known about the local and global consequences of the changes, which included a historic drop in floating sea ice cover, accelerated melting of the giant ice sheets. and the slowing of a deep ocean current known as the Southern Ocean turning back.
King said they were likely to affect temperature and rainfall patterns across Australia in a number of ways – changes that could alter communities and affect the viability of some agricultural industries – and accelerate sea level rise along the coast. .
He said Australia committed only tens of thousands of dollars a year to work on the continent and much of that went to building and maintaining ships and stations, not research. A cargo ship in the Antarctic could cost more than $40m.
King said the funding allocation was small in the context of the $680bn federal budget and did not reflect the importance of the continent.
“We need a champion in the Cabinet who can push forward a multi-year agenda in the Antarctic. “Maybe one of the weaknesses is that Antarctica is seen as an environmental problem, but it’s a whole-of-government problem,” King said.
He said: “The Australian economy, and the global economy, is based on Antarctica. We are moving to a stage where Antarctica will no longer be like that.”
The changes in the Antarctic region have raised serious concerns about its immediate health and at the same time as evidence that longer-term transformations associated with the climate crisis have begun earlier than thought likely.
Sea ice cover in the ocean surrounding the continent fell for six straight months to a level well below anything on the satellite record. One example of its impact: a peer-reviewed paper found that an earlier decline in 2022 that killed thousands of emperor penguin chicks was likely caused by a “catastrophic breeding failure”.
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Separate papers found that the Southern Ocean’s turning circulation has slowed by about 30% since the 1990s and could drop much more by mid-century due to meltwater from the continental ice sheets if greenhouse gas emissions would be significantly reduced. The scientists said this could generate a cascade of impacts to push up sea levels, change weather patterns and starve marine life of a vital source of nutrients. Past changes in ocean circulation have occurred over 1,000 years. The paper said in this case it could happen within decades, with relatively sudden consequences for lives and livelihoods.
Other research last year suggested that the accelerated melting of the ice shelves that extended across the Amundsen Sea in western Antarctica was locked in and beyond human control for the rest of this century, even if emissions were significantly reduced.
King said scientists studying these changes and their consequences were relying on scientific models that were incomplete for parts of western Antarctica “and even more so for the rest of the continent”.
“There’s so much we don’t know… We don’t know the shape of the bedrock under the ice that controls how the ice retreats and what the impact of the retreat is,” he said. “We have almost no data on the continental shelf.”
How little is known about the Southern Ocean’s seabed was highlighted last week when the Australian Antarctic Division announced that tourists on a replacement expedition had mapped a 2km deep, 46km long canyon from the Adams glacier near Casey station when which wild weather delayed unloading. goods.
Ben Galton-Fenzi, a glaciologist with the Australian Antarctic Division, said the discovery was significant but there were more important areas of the seabed that scientists could study if there was support for a dedicated research expedition.
King said that while Australia now had access to the RSV Nuyina, an icebreaking research and supply ship, multiple icebreakers or autonomous robotic ships would be needed to carry out the long-term research required.
He said a research expedition to the fringing ice zone, the transitional area between the open sea and floating ice, had been canceled when the Nuyina was not ready in time and had yet to be rescheduled.
Related: A study shows that Greenland will lose 30m tonnes of ice per hour
King said there was some evidence of the impact of sea ice loss on Australian weather patterns – one study suggested it could have a drying effect in New South Wales and be linked to increased rainfall in the north West Australia. But scientists could not yet say what the changes would mean for rainfall patterns over the next decade.
He said the significant risks associated with the impact of melting glaciers and a possible reduction in the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by the Southern Ocean were not receiving the attention they needed. Research led by King found that Antarctic glaciers have been losing an average of 150bn tonnes of ice per year – around 17m tonnes per hour – over the past two decades.
There is a similar issue in the northern hemisphere. Research published last week found that the Greenland ice cap was losing an average of 30m tonnes of ice per hour, 20% more than previously thought.
