Dire straits

We are in dire straits as per in an in-depth article presented by the NYTimes titled Rising From the Antarctic, a Climate Alarm.

The ocean’s dominant feature, extending up to two miles deep and as much as 1,200 miles wide, is the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, by far the largest current in the world. It is the world’s climate engine, and it has kept the world from warming even more by drawing deep water from the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans, much of which has been submerged for hundreds of years, and pulling it to the surface. There, it exchanges heat and carbon dioxide with the atmosphere before being dispatched again on its eternal round trip.

Without this action, which scientists call upwelling, the world would be even hotter than it has become as a result of human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases.

“From no perspective is there any place more important than the Southern Ocean,” said Joellen L. Russell, an oceanographer at the University of Arizona. “There’s nothing like it on Planet Earth.”

Alarming says it all.

As the world warms, Dr. Russell and others say, the unceasing winds that drive the upwelling are getting stronger. That could have the effect of releasing more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, by bringing to the surface more of the deep water that has held this carbon locked away for centuries.

In addition, the Southern Ocean is getting warmer, and that has another important climate effect. Some of this upwelling water, which is already relatively warm, flows beneath ice shelves on the Antarctic coast that help keep the continent’s vast, thick ice sheets from reaching the sea more quickly.

 

In effect, “Antarctica is melting from the bottom,” said Henri Drake, an oceanographer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Read the entire piece. The stunning interactive graphics will show why earth's in dire straits without issue.