Scientists working in Antarctica have discovered an alarming rise in sea temperature that threatens to disrupt populations of penguins, whales, seals and a host of smaller creatures within a few decades.
The new study shows the ocean west of the Antarctic Peninsula has warmed by more than a degree since the 1960s — confounding computer models and experts who believed that a combination of ice, winds and currents would keep the water cool and shield fragile marine creatures from the effects of climate change.
This is the first evidence that the key Southern Ocean is getting warmer: a finding with potentially severe implications for marine life.
Lloyd Peck, a marine biologist with the British Antarctic Survey, said: ”The sea temperature is going up in a way that wasn’t predicted and this makes me more worried for the marine animals … A one-degree increase puts us into the region where the animals are pushed to one end of their biological, physiological and ecological capabilities.”
Animals that live on the seabed around the Antarctic Peninsula, where summertime water temperatures currently peak at about 0,5°C, are sensitive to small shifts in temperature. In water just two degrees warmer, molluscs become unable to bury themselves in seabed sediment, limpets cannot turn over and scallops lose the ability to swim. These changes would make them more susceptible to predators, disrupting the food chain and quickly endangering larger animals and birds.
”If the warming goes on at the same rate for 50 years or 100 years then lots of populations of animals I work on, and maybe entire species, would be at risk,” Peck said.
The climate of the Antarctic Peninsula, which reaches north from the frozen continent towards South America, is the most rapidly changing in the southern hemisphere. Air temperatures there have risen nearly 3°C since 1951 and sea-ice cover around it has dropped 20% since 1979.
The amount of salt in the top layer of water has also increased: a crucial discovery as dissolved salt lowers the freezing point of water and helps to make it more difficult for the insulating cover of sea ice to form in winter. Less ice would form on warmer seas in winter, which in turn would increase the warming effect because sea ice reflects sunlight and protects the water from the warmer air. The rising sea temperature will also speed up the melting of glaciers.
Antarctic creatures are particularly vulnerable to rising temperatures because the roughly circular Antarctic continent stops them moving south to escape warmer conditions. — Â