Time_USA_-_23_09_2019

90 Time September 23, 2019

Humans were noT around To see anTarcTica

in the good times, tens of millions of years ago, when

it was home to palms and baobab trees, reptiles and

marsupials. It had some of the same mountains it

has today, some of the same valleys and inlets. But

it didn’t have the same address.

Long ago, Antarctica was located in the mid-

latitudes, once part of the super continent Gondwana,

until it slowly broke away, leaving continental kin

like Africa and South America behind. It then went

its own way, carried off by continental drift at just

1 to 2 in. per year, until it wound up where it is today,

banished by tectonics to the bottom of the world.

There, the 5.4 million sq. mi. continent—

larger than Australia’s 2.9 million and Europe’s

3.9 million—gets its sunlight only laterally, never

vertically, and will thus ever be sunk in a deep

freeze, until the same crustal migration carries it

to a kinder part of the planet. For now, Antarctica

is buried under a layer of ice that averages 7,100 ft.

deep—or 1.3 miles. That dense covering represents

90% of all the world’s ice and 70% of its fresh water,

locked in a wasteland.

Only it’s not a wasteland. Antarctica is home to

penguins, seals, visiting whales, gulls, krill, alba-

tross and more. Like all continents, it has its com-

plex food web; like all continents it has its seasons

and its landscapes and its peaks and valleys. They

aren’t the seasons we might like; it’s not a land-

scape we could survive. But our species is not the

sole measure of a continent’s worth.

What’s more, all of that entrained ice is serv-

ing us well. In a world in which Antarctica were

situated elsewhere, the ice would be water and

the oceans would be deeper, inundating what are

now our coasts. It wouldn’t have mattered to us if

we’d been born into that world. If there had been

no Florida in the first place, we never would have

built a Miami. But there is, and we did. And now,

thanks to our industrial enterprise and our fossil-

fuel gluttony, we’re raising the temperature and

melting the ice. The Arctic is already vanishing and

the Antarctic is following, threatening us with the

very inundation the polar ice spares us. The num-

bers here tell an alarming story—and it’s a story we

are every day authoring. —Jeffrey Kluger

Keep

Antarctica

on Ice

Major ice shelves on the peninsula

have collapsed, including the Larsen B

ice shelf, the size of Rhode Island,

which disintegrated in 2002

1

The Wilkins ice shelf has been

breaking since 1998, while major

glaciers farther south are retreating;

the Thwaites glacier, for instance,

is currently a backstop to other

neighboring glaciers—if it disappears,

that could create a cascading effect

2

East Antarctica has long been

more stable than West Antarctica,

but scientists are finding that even

the titanic ice sheets of the east

are shrinking

3

Populations of Antarctic krill—a key

food source for whales, seals and

penguins—have shrunk dramatically

in recent decades, probably because

the krill’s ice habitat is melting

4

ANTARCTICA

ANTARCTICA

1910s 0.38°

Difference

in global average

temperature (°C)

by decade,

relative to a

1910–2000

average

1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

0.25°

0.07°

0.04°

0.06°

0 °

0.06°

0.35°

0.59°

0.94°

1.21°

HOW A

COAST

DISINTEGRATES

Weakening

Warmer

water and air

destabilize

floating ice

shelves that

keep glaciers

out of the sea

1

2

2050:

THE

FIGHT

FOR

EARTH

ICE SHELF

GLACIER