• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
13 Canadian Fossils Linked to Massive Losses in Western Wildfires May 29, 2023
Hamilton Plans Canada’s First Heat Bylaw for Rental Housing May 29, 2023
UK Traffic Calming Strategy Produces Solid Results, Manufactured Anxiety May 29, 2023
Community Wind Farm Earns Support, Generates Income in German Village May 29, 2023
‘Remarkable Rebuke’: 130 U.S, EU Legislators Ask UN to Ditch Fossil CEO as COP 28 Chair May 23, 2023
Next
Prev

Polar link unites far extremes of north and south

November 30, 2020
Reading time: 3 minutes
Primary Author: Tim Radford

 

They are different worlds, one an ocean, the other a continent. But a polar link keeps them in touch with each other.

LONDON, 30 November, 2020 − The Arctic and Antarctica are literally a world apart, but for an unlikely polar link. Change in the mass of ice in the north can and does precipitate change in the furthest reaches of the southern hemisphere.

  • The climate news you need. Subscribe now to our engaging new weekly digest.
  • You’ll receive exclusive, never-before-seen-content, distilled and delivered to your inbox every weekend.
  • The Weekender: Succinct, solutions-focused, and designed with the discerning reader in mind.
Subscribe

According to 40,000 years of geological evidence, when the Arctic Ocean ice retreats, global sea levels rise to start washing away the sea ice around the shelf of the vast frozen continent at the other extreme of the planet.

This pattern of action at a distance is confirmed by computer simulations: the planet’s two hemispheres are in a kind of conversation, according to a new study in the journal Nature.

“Our results highlight how interconnected the Earth system is, with changes in one part of the planet driving changes in another,” said Natalya Gomez, of McGill University in Canada, who led the study.

“In the modern era, we haven’t seen the kind of large ice sheet retreat that we might see in our future warming world. Looking to records and models of change in Earth’s history can inform us about this.”

“Ice sheets can influence each other over great distances. It’s as though they were talking to one another about sea level changes”

The Arctic is one of the fastest-warming places on the planet: what happens in the far north has reverberations throughout the hemisphere. And Antarctica, too, is changing swiftly.

Although both extremes of cold are vulnerable to global heating driven by profligate fossil fuel use and global-scale loss of forests, climate scientists have tended to consider them as separate cases.

But a closer look at geological records − ice cores and samples from the ocean bottom that offer evidence of iceberg drift across the millennia − revealed a connection. The polar link is real.

At the height of the last ice age more than 20,000 years ago, the mass of ice in the north lowered global sea levels and the Antarctic ice shelf advanced. As the world began to warm again, ice in the north began to flow into the sea. Sea levels rose in the southern hemisphere and this began to force a retreat of the Antarctic ice.

“Ice sheets can influence each other over great distances due to the water that flows between them. It’s as though they were talking to one another about sea level changes,” Dr Gomez said.

Dynamic ice

“Polar ice sheets are not just large static mounds of ice. They evolve on various different time scales and are in constant flux, with ice growing and retreating, depending on the climate and the surrounding water levels.

“They gain ice as snow piles up on top of them, then spread outwards under their own weight, and stream out into the surrounding ocean where their edges break off into icebergs.”

The evidence showed that sea level change in Antarctica and ice mass loss in the Arctic were linked, over a sequence of at least 40,000 years.

“These ice sheets are really dynamic, exciting and intriguing parts of the Earth’s climate system. It’s staggering to think of ice that is several kilometres thick, that covers an entire continent, and that is evolving on all of these different timescales with global consequences,” Dr Gomez said.

“It’s just motivation for trying to better understand these really massive systems that are so far away from us.” − Climate News Network



in Climate News Network

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

moerschy / Pixabay
Biodiversity & Habitat

Planetary Weight Study Shows Humans Taking Most of Earth’s Resources

March 19, 2023
42
U.S. Geological Survey/wikimedia commons
Biodiversity & Habitat

Climate Change Amplifies Risk of ‘Insect Apocalypse’

December 1, 2022
56
Alaa Abd El-Fatah/wikimedia commons
COP Conferences

Rights Abuses, Intrusive Conference App Put Egypt Under Spotlight as COP 27 Host

November 14, 2022
29

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

Neal Alderson/Twitter

Out-of-Control Wildfire Burns Homes, Forces Evacuations Outside Halifax

May 29, 2023
91
pixabay

Anti-Mob Laws to Prosecute Fossils, Kudos for Calgary, 113M Climate Refugees, Orcas Fight Back, and a Climate Dictionary

May 24, 2023
136
Inspiration 4 Photos/flickr

Cooling Upper Atmosphere Has Scientists ‘Very Worried’

May 23, 2023
274
University of Oxford Press Office/flickr

PEROVSKITES: Qcells Plans First Production Line for ‘Miracle’ Solar Cell

May 23, 2023
435
Arctic Circle/flickr

‘Remarkable Rebuke’: 130 U.S, EU Legislators Ask UN to Ditch Fossil CEO as COP 28 Chair

May 23, 2023
400
François GOGLINS/wikimedia commons

Corrosion Problem Shutters Half of France’s Nuclear Reactors

August 2, 2022
3.7k

Recent Posts

Martin Davis/Facebook

13 Canadian Fossils Linked to Massive Losses in Western Wildfires

May 29, 2023
5
York Region/flickr

Hamilton Plans Canada’s First Heat Bylaw for Rental Housing

May 29, 2023
4
Jörg Möller/Pixabay

UK Traffic Calming Strategy Produces Solid Results, Manufactured Anxiety

May 29, 2023
3

Waste Heat from Quebec Data Centre to Grow 80,000 Tonnes of Veggies Per Year

May 29, 2023
8
kpgolfpro/Pixabay

Community Wind Farm Earns Support, Generates Income in German Village

May 29, 2023
9
Pexels/pixabay

Engineers Replace Sand in Concrete with Disposable Diapers

May 29, 2023
7
Next Post

World Bank helps developing countries' wind spurt

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}