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Global Warming? 14 Million Year Old Ice Begs To Differ!
The unique discoveries under the ice are priceless to scientists but I think it's another clang in the alarm clock of the Earth.
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Hundreds of baby penguins found dead in Brazil
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Hundreds of baby penguins swept from the icy shores of Antarctica and Patagonia are washing up dead on Rio de Janeiro's tropical beaches, rescuers and penguin experts said Friday.
More than 400 penguins, most of them young, have been found dead on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro state over the past two months, according to Eduardo Pimenta, superintendent for the state coastal protection and environment agency in the resort city of Cabo Frio.
While it is common here to find some penguins — both dead and alive — swept by strong ocean currents from the Strait of Magellan, Pimenta said there have been more this year than at any time in recent memory.
Rescuers and those who treat penguins are divided over the possible causes.
Thiago Muniz, a veterinarian at the Niteroi Zoo, said he believed overfishing has forced the penguins to swim further from shore to find fish to eat "and that leaves them more vulnerable to getting caught up in the strong ocean currents."
Niteroi, the state's biggest zoo, already has already received about 100 penguins for treatment this year and many are drenched in petroleum, Muniz said. The Campos oil field that supplies most of Brazil's oil lies offshore.
Muniz said he hadn't seen penguins suffering from the effects of other pollutants, but he pointed out that already dead penguins aren't brought in for treatment.
Pimenta suggested pollution is to blame.
"Aside from the oil in the Campos basin, the pollution is lowering the animals' immunity, leaving them vulnerable to funguses and bacteria that attack their lungs," Pimenta said, quoting biologists who work with him. RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Hundreds of baby penguins swept from the icy shores of Antarctica and Patagonia are washing up dead on Rio de... more -
Antarctic ice shelf 'hanging by thread': European scientists
New evidence has emerged that a large plate of floating ice shelf attached to Antarctica is breaking up, in a troubling sign of global warming, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Thursday.
Images taken by its Envisat remote-sensing satellite show that Wilkins Ice Shelf is "hanging by its last thread" to Charcot Island, one of the plate's key anchors to the Antarctic peninsula, ESA said in a press release.
"Since the connection to the island... helps stabilise the ice shelf, it is likely the breakup of the bridge will put the remainder of the ice shelf at risk," it said.
Wilkins Ice Shelf had been stable for most of the last century, covering around 16,000 square kilometres (6,000 square miles), or about the size of Northern Ireland, before it began to retreat in the 1990s.
Since then several large areas have broken away, and two big breakoffs this year left only a narrow ice bridge about 2.7 kilometres (1.7 miles) wide to connect the shelf to Charcot and nearby Latady Island.
The latest images, taken by Envisat's radar, say fractures have now opened up in this bridge and adjacent areas of the plate are disintegrating, creating large icebergs.
Scientists are puzzled and concerned by the event, ESA added.
The Antarctic peninsula -- the tongue of land that juts northward from the white continent towards South America -- has had one of the highest rates of warming anywhere in the world in recent decades.
But this latest stage of the breakup occurred during the Southern Hemisphere's winter, when atmospheric temperatures are at their lowest.
One idea is that warmer water from the Southern Ocean is reaching the underside of the ice shelf and thinning it rapidly from underneath.
"Wilkins Ice Shelf is the most recent in a long, and growing, list of ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula that are responding to the rapid warming that has occurred in this area over the last fifty years," researcher David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) said.
"Current events are showing that we were being too conservative, when we made the prediction in the early 1990s that Wilkins Ice Shelf would be lost within 30 years. The truth is, it is going more quickly than we guessed."
In the past three decades, six Antarctic ice shelves have collapsed completely -- Prince Gustav Channel, Larsen Inlet, Larsen A, Larsen B, Wordie, Muller and the Jones Ice Shelf. New evidence has emerged that a large plate of floating ice shelf attached to Antarctica is breaking up, in a troubling sign of global... more -
Antarctica Base Gets 16,500 Condoms Before Darkness
A New Zealand newspaper reports that one of the last shipments to a US research base in Antarctica before the onset of winter darkness wasn't sophisticated technical equipment -- but a year's supply of condoms.
Bill Henriksen, the manager of the McMurdo base station, told the 'Southland Times' nearly 16,500 condoms were delivered last month and would be made available, free of charge, to staff throughout the year. A New Zealand newspaper reports that one of the last shipments to a US research base in Antarctica before the onset of winter darkness... more -
Antarctica glacier melting faster
A glacier used as a benchmark to measure global warming's impact on the Antarctic Peninsula melted more than usual in the past year, according to an Argentine glacier researcher.
The whole of Antarctica holds enough ice and snow to raise world sea levels by 187 feet if it all melted over thousands of years, according to U.N. data.
Pavithra George reports. A glacier used as a benchmark to measure global warming's impact on the Antarctic Peninsula melted more than usual in the past ye... more -
Antarctic ice sheet hangs by thread
A large chunk of ice has started to break away from Antarctica's Wilkins Ice Shelf.
Wilkins is the largest ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula to be threatened so far.
Satellite images show the collapse began on February 28 as a massive iceberg fell away from the ice shelf's southwestern front.
This lead to a runaway disintegration of the shelf interior.
Wilkins Ice Shelf spans about 13,000 square km (5,000 square miles) and is located on the southwest Antarctic Peninsula about 1,600 km (1,000 miles) south of South America.
Michelle Carlile-Alkhouri reports. A large chunk of ice has started to break away from Antarctica's Wilkins Ice Shelf. ... more -
Escalating ice loss found in Antarctica
Sheets melting in an area once thought to be unaffected by global warming.
Climatic changes appear to be destabilizing vast ice sheets of western Antarctica that had previously seemed relatively protected from global warming, researchers reported yesterday, raising the prospect of faster sea-level rise than current estimates. Sheets melting in an area once thought to be unaffected by global warming. ... more
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