Antarctica experienced a sixfold increase in yearly ice mass loss between 1979 and 2017. “That’s just the tip of the iceberg,” said Eric Rignot, chair of Earth system science at University of California, Irvine.
Photographs of rare species from unexplored area of Antarctic seabed highlight the need to protect life in one of the most remote places on the planet. The images below are the first of creatures found in a previously unexplored region of the Antarctic seabed offering a fascinating glimpse of life in one of the most remote and pristine places on the planet.
“Lots of people just don’t understand that there’s a darker side to Antarctica,” says Klaus Dodds, professor of geopolitics at Royal Holloway University of London. “What we’re seeing is great power politics play out in a space that a lot of people think of as just frozen wastes.”
There are thresholds, non-linear evolutions that are not yet incorporated into current climate models. Fifty-six million years ago, the Earth experienced an exceptional episode of global warming. In a very short time on a geological scale, within 10 to 20,000 years, the average temperature increased by five to eight degrees, only returning to its original level a few hundred thousand years later.
