Antarctica: The End of Infinity?
New findings show a continent approaching its breaking point, suggesting our climate models could be too conservative.
Growing up in Patagonia, I always felt a magnetic pull toward Antarctica. It wasn’t just about the allure of adventure, inspired by heroes like Shackleton, but also a deep, almost personal connection. I’ve always had a fascination with infinity. And infinity, to me, has always been embodied by those boundless landscapes of glaciers, the repetitive and overwhelming whiteness of a place where the horizon seems to stretch forever.
This Antarctic infinity has always been an unresolved puzzle regarded as resilient amidst a warming climate. On the other pole, the Arctic sea ice is behaving as we have come to expect, with studies clearly asserting that the Northern counterpart is warming two to four times the rate of other regions on Earth. In the meantime, the South Pole remained an enigma.
But then came 2023, the year when the climate crisis definitely arrived in Antarctica. Infinity, for once, seemed to find a breaking point. In February, the sea ice surrounding the continent hit its lowest levels on record, easily beating the previous low set only a year earlier. Reports from July 30th revealed that Antarctica has lost a mass of ice the size of…
