Icy Antarctica is known for its vast white landscape. But extreme heat events and climate change are turning parts of the continent green, according to a concerning new study. Scientists from universities of Exeter and Hertfordshire used satellite imagery and data to analyse vegetation levels in Antarctica, which has been warming at ana alarming rate, much faster than the global average. As per CNN, the team of researchers found plant life – mostly mosses – and said the green cover has increased 10-fold over the past four decades or 40 years.
The study was published on Friday in the journal Nature Geoscience.
From a meagre 0.4 square miles in 1986, the vegetation cover reached almost 5 square miles in 2021, the study found. In a period of five years – from 2016 to 2021 – accelerated by more than 30 per cent.
“Our findings confirm that the influence of anthropogenic climate change has no limit in its reach,” Thomas Roland, a study author and environmental scientist at the University of Exeter, told CNN. “Even on the Antarctic Peninsula – this most extreme, remote and isolated ‘wilderness’ region – the landscape is changing, and these effects are visible from space.”
Though the landscape is almost entirely snow, these researchers found that the green cover has grown dramatically.
At a conference in Chile in August, nearly 1,500 academics, researchers and scientists discussed whether the extreme climate events events meant Antarctica had reached a tipping point, or a point of accelerated and irreversible sea ice loss from the West Antarctic ice sheet.
“You might see the same rise in CO2 over thousands of years, and now it’s happened in 100 years,” said Liz Keller, a paleoclimate specialist from the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand.
Antarctica, the coldest place on Earth, has witnessed severe extreme heat events.
In summer months this year, the average temperature in the continent climbed up to 50 degrees Fahrenheit above normal.
In March 2022, temperatures in some parts of Antarctica reached up to 70 degrees Fahrenheit above normal, the most extreme temperature variation ever recorded in the continent.