Antarctica: decrease in ice affects Colombian Pacific and Caribbean waters
Eduardo Najar
June 11, 2023 – 11:11 PM
The high price of the sun’s rays is being paid immediately by the poles of the Earth, and especially places like Antarctica, which is home to not only 90% of the terrestrial ice but also 77% of the planet’s fresh water, for so it is not surprising that its importance is of great dimensions for life on the planet.
However, the heat iceberg that is forming has these areas in check – home to penguins, seals and seagulls, among marine species – and which are the starting point for the heated water, which begins to behave like a soup , is driven by the strong winds towards other marine areas.
Geologist Valentina Sandoval Pinilla, a member of the Oceanology Research group (CENIT) of the National University (UNAL), was interested in evaluating the west of the Antarctic peninsula, which, according to reports in recent years, is one of the most affected by the imminent heat that comes from the sun’s rays and that has intensified with the weakening of the atmospheric layers that protect the Earth.
“We found that between 2012 and 2021 the increase in the temperature of the surface waters of the sea has been very high in this area, and has depended on the seasons: in February and March, when summer ends and autumn begins, the heat is greater, while in August and September the opposite occurs”, he assures.
He adds that “this is important because the intensity of the wind, which has increased by between 0.7 and 0.8 m/s from its expected value, drags the surface waters and takes them further to the bottom, concentrating the heat in other areas sea ice and intensifying with its speed and force the decrease of sea ice cover”.
According to oceanologist Nancy Liliana Villegas, professor at the UNAL Faculty of Sciences, “what happens in the Colombian Pacific and Caribbean has an impact on Antarctica and vice versa: water systems are directly related, and the increase in temperature in those places that seem far away it is closer than it seems”.
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These analyzes help to understand the teleconnections, which are the climatic links between different geographic regions and have different types of circulation paths of climate anomalies such as increases in heat in marine waters around the globe, for example, the Southern Oscillation (SO). , which occurs in the western and eastern Pacific, or the Antarctic Oscillation (OAA), which moves from Antarctica to the north or south depending on the season.
In 2018, the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned about the consequences of a possible increase of 1.5 °C in the temperature of Antarctica, noting that the west of the region is warming faster than the east, and also that the west has greater environmental productivity, since it is home to marine species of animals and plants essential to ecosystems.
“The permafrost, which is the polar or sea ice cover, is decreasing because the flow of cold air, which should be coming from the polar caps and neutralizes the heat, is no longer the same and its direct consequence is the concentration of high temperatures in surface waters, which will then be pushed to other depths and circulate through areas such as the Pacific or the Caribbean”, indicates Professor Villegas.
For the research, the Copernicus Climate Change Service database was used, which is freely accessible and has collected information on changes in temperature, winds and marine coverage in the world for more than 80 years.
With the information for each month from 2012 to 2021, which was the interval that the geologist was interested in due to the expansion of global warming, and especially in the melting of the western Antarctic Peninsula, she put some analysis and visualization software to the test. such as NOAA-PMEL/ Ferret, specialized for oceanographers and meteorologists.
“4 points of interest in this area of Antarctica were taken into account, which are at latitudes from 77° West with 71° South, to 59° West with 61° South, then the map of these areas of Antarctica was divided into transects, which are small parts, to see how the phenomenon of temperature increase evolved from 2012 to 2021, wind intensity, and ice cover,” says researcher Sandoval.