Catastrophic effects of global warming

by Jules Andrews

In April 2000, news rocketed around the scientific world that the largest 
iceberg ever recorded had just snapped off the Ross Ice Shelf in 
Antarctica. It has taken just two years for that record to again be broken. 
Accompanying this event was the collapse of the Larsen B ice-shelf, with 
720 billion tonnes of ice now floating off into the South Atlantic 
Ocean.

These are just the latest in a series of events over the last seven years 
that point to the catastrophic effects of global warming.

The Larsen Ice Shelf, located on the Antarctic peninsular below the tip of 
South America is now only 60 per cent of its former size. This part of 
Antarctica is warming more than four times faster than the rest of the 
world, the temperature climbing 2.5 degrees in the last 50 years.

Professor Bill Budd of Australia's Antarctic Co-operative Research Centre 
said of the incident, "The atmospheric warming is contributing to more melt 
on the ice surface, and that can lead to the extension of crevasses through 
the ice shelf, thus breaking it up.

"We also have evidence of warming of the ocean below floating ice which 
shows that even one or two-tenths of a degree make a significant 
difference. It's a double whammy, so to speak."

As the Larsen Shelf was already floating on water, its collapse will make 
no difference to the current ocean levels.

However, of greater concern to scientists is the gigantic Ross Ice Shelf 
located below New Zealand.

A large part of this ice-shelf sits on under-ocean rock, and were it to 
collapse, it would raise the ocean levels by five metres.

The temperature on the Ross Shelf is currently only a few degrees too cool 
in the summer for this to happen.

It was on this great sheet of Ice that Norwegian Roald Amundsen landed on 
in 1911, setting up his first camp on his trek to the South Pole. When the 
record-breaking berg split off in 2000, it took that campsite with it.

These events are also being repeated in the Northern Hemisphere. The Global 
Warming debate raged last August when a Russian ice-breaker carrying 
tourists found open water at the North Pole.