Aerial Photos of Antarctica Reveal the Devastating Toll of Climate Change

A crevasse measuring a few thousand feet from an altitude of 1,500 ft., during a November flyover. The Great Crack-Up By JEFFREY KLUGER Photographs by PAOLO PELLEGRIN—MAGNUM PHOTOS FOR TIME It’s hard to wreck a continent you can barely get your hands on. Human beings typically do our worst environmental damage in the places we live and work—clear-cutting forests, strip-mining mountains. Antarctica, however, was more or less out of reach. No more. Climate change has become our species’ great destructive equalizer, leaving no part of the planet safe from the harm we do. In March 2017, the sea ice around both poles reached a record low for that time of year. In July, a 1 trillion–ton iceberg, roughly the size of Delaware, calved off of the Larsen C ice shelf in western Antarctica. The damage to the ice is being done not just from above, as the planet’s air warms, but from below, as its oceans do too. Photograph by Paolo Pellegrin—Magnum Photos for TIME While the disappearance of Arctic sea ice is enough of an environmental calamity, it’s the ice that covers Antarctica that is a bigger real menace. As it melts and sloughs off the land, it raises sea levels worldwide. According to one 2017 study, if greenhouse-gas emissions continue at their current rate, low-lying areas around the world could by deluged by up to 4 ft. of sea-level increase before the end of the century. A more-recent study suggests that increased snowfall on the ea...
Source: TIME.com: Top Science and Health Stories - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: 2017 climate change climate change 2017 global warming 2017 iceberg antarctica 2017 larsen c ice shelf larsen ice shelf massive crack antarctica massive crack in antarctica massive iceberg breaks off antarctica Source Type: news