No Ancestral Home to Visit Any Longer

About a year ago I got worried about my homeland – Antarctica.  In March 2008 a big chunk of what my great- great- grandparents called home broke off – this was the beginning of the end for the Wilkins Ice Shelf. The Wilkins ice shelf covers an area of about 5,282 square miles and satellite images taken at the end of February 2008 revealed that its rapid (on ice-sheet timescales) disintegration began after an iceberg the size of the Isle of Man broke away from its western edge.  Last year scientist said “we thought it would take 30-50 years for this massive ice sheet to break-away but now it looks as if it will happen much faster”.

Penguins and scientists around the world have been watching the remaining ice bridge since last March, anticipating its collapse. Now it has broken!  Why worry – well because the loss of an ice shelf can also allow the glaciers that feed into it to start flowing ice into the ocean at an accelerated rate, contributing to a rise in global sea levels. The Wilkins Ice Shelf is located on the southwestern Antarctic Peninsula, the fastest-warming region of the Earth. In the past 50 years, the Antarctic Peninsula has warmed by 2.5 degrees C.

Now, let’s be clear, I’ve never seen the Wilkins Ice Shelf and (like those cartoon penguins in Madagascar) I don’t’ think I’d much like to actually LIVE there.  But lots of my family and friends do – so its worth worrying for them – but also, it seems, for other bigger and more important reasons. Scientists think that the dramatic loss of these ice shelves, which have existed for hundreds to thousands of years, is an important sign of climate change in the southern hemisphere.  They say that the Wilkins is following a pattern of instability and rapid collapse that many Antarctic Peninsula ice shelves have experienced in recent years. 

If you want to learn more then read here

http://nsidc.org/news/press/20090408_Wilkins.html

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/04/03/antarctica.ice.shelf/ 

Gives me the shivers -- Brrrrrrrrrrr!

Peng Guin