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Air above Antarctica warming rapidly Rhett A. Butler, mongabay.com March 30, 2006 The research, published in the March 30 issue of the journal Science, found that the warming is seen across the whole Antarctic continent and much of the Southern Ocean. The study is the first to measure temperature change above the continent, previous studies focused on surface temperatures. "The warming above the Antarctic could have implications for snowfall across the Antarctic and sea level rise," said lead author Dr John Turner of the British Antarctic Survey. "Current climate model simulations don't reproduce the observed warming, pointing to weaknesses in their ability to represent the Antarctic climate system. Our next step is to try to improve the models. "
The study comes a week after a paper in Science said that by 2100, Earth could be 4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than present and sea levels could climb 2-6 meters (6-20 feet) if past climate is any indication of the future. Meanwhile, data released by NASA earlier this month shows that Antarctica's ice sheet decreased by about 152 cubic kilometers annually from April 2002 to August 2005, a volume of water equal to 3 months of total water consumption in the United States. In that study, researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder said that the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet—which holds about 90 percent of Earth's ice and 70 percent of the planet's fresh water resources—accounted for about 13 percent, or around 1.2 millimeters, of the overall observed sea level rise for the same period. In all, Antarctica's ice sheet holds enough water to raise sea levels by 60 meters.
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