Climate change is having significant impacts on life and nature in Antarctica. However, these changes do not stay in the south polar region, they have global impacts, right down to our own doorstep. This is shown by the new report of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, which was presented by Hans-Otto Pörtner, ecophysiologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine research (AWI) at the 44th Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (ATCM) in Berlin.
Ice sheets are melting, the continent’s climate is changing, and the Southern Ocean is warming, becoming more acidic and losing oxygen. Antarctica is changing and this is also affecting the rest of the world: global sea levels are rising due to melting ice and in many regions the changes in Antarctica are causing weather extremes such as drought or heavy rain to occur more frequently and more strongly. In its new report, the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) shows the impacts of climate change on Antarctica and how these changes will affect the entire Earth system.
Locally, changing climate is already affecting the region’s whales, seals, penguins, and the krill they rely on as nutrition. Emperor penguins may be all but gone by the end of the century unless urgent action is taken. Concerningly, projections for sea level rise from the ice sheets over the next several decades show that Antarctic melt could help contribute to as much as two meter of global sea level rise before the century is out. Just 40 centimeters of global sea level rise would cause coastal flood events, which has been occurring once every 100 years, to become annual events.
The report makes clear that adhering to, and preferably exceeding, the Paris Climate Agreement greenhouse gas emissions reductions targets will substantially lessen changes to the Antarctic and their implications for society. SCAR developed the report specifically for the Parties to the Antarctic Treaty, who are gathering in Berlin for their 44th Annual Meeting ATCM. The Parties are those countries responsible for the environmental management of the Antarctic. “Antarctica’s changes have profound consequences for all of us,” says Professor Steven Chown of Monash University, director of Securing Antarctica's Environmental Future (SAEF) and lead of the report. “Antarctica has always been our quiet, distant neighbour. Now there’s no need to travel to visit it. It’s right here, noisily disturbing the neighbourhood, threatening more to come. Higher sea levels, more extremes, less help with managing the global climate.” SCAR's former president stresses that the Parties at this year's ATCM have a real opportunity to strengthen their responses to climate change to help the world deal with its most profound existential crisis. To that end, the new SCAR report includes recommendations that are important to the future strategic direction of national and international climate research in Antarctica.
The SCAR report: Antarctic Change and the Environment (ACCE)