Climate Change Shrinking Antarctic Snows January 14, 2017

Phys.Org:

“When I used to come to Antarctica in the 1990s, it never used to rain,” said Rodolfo Sanchez, director of the Argentine Antarctic Institute (IAA).

“Now it rains regularly—instead of snowing,” he told AFP during an Argentine government visit to King George Island, off the tip of the western Antarctic peninsula.

Scientists monitoring conditions at the base say the average temperature here has increased by 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past century.

“The glacier used to reach all the way to the shore,” Sanchez says. “Now there is a 500-meter (550-yard) wide beach.”

Dark scars of rock are showing through what were once spotless sheets of white snow on the glaciers’ flanks.

“Antarctica is a thermometer that shows how the world is changing,” said Adriana Gulisano, a physicist at Argentina’s National Antarctic Directorate.

“There is no place where climate change is more in evidence.”

Wildlife signs

Local wildlife also appears to reflect to the change.

Scientists at the Carlini base say a pair of yellow-throated King penguins have swum up to mate nearby for the past three years.

Although the theory is not confirmed, they suspect another sign of climate change. The species had previously been thought to be restricted to warmer spots on the Falkland Islands and the Argentine mainland.

Technician Luis Souza, 56, has divided his time since 1979 between Buenos Aires and the Carlini base, where he has studied migrating birds: cormorants, gulls and penguins.

More crucially, scientists say melting ice is disrupting the breeding of krill, a shrimp-like creature that serves as food for numerous species.

“Less ice means fewer krill for the whales, penguins and seals,” said Sanchez. “The whole food chain is affected.”