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Antarctic explorers have compared data gathered during a hundred years, discovering slight differences.
STATES CHRONICLE – Antarctic explorers have analyzed the data gathered in about a hundred years, and they have discovered that Antarctica barely changed in size during all these years of evolution and transformations. Their role was crucial in doing research, exploring the area of sea ice layers, always updating their data as the time passed by. Many crews of explorers who were sent there to analyze the changes had tried to determine a comparison between the place where the ice edge was situated during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration and where it is located nowadays by the satellites.
The logbooks of the ships conducted by Erich von Drygalski, Ernest Shackelton or Robert Scott were sent for ice explorations in the past to determine measurements useful for that comparison. The new study called The Cryosphere was recently published in the European Geosciences Union magazine. It suggested that the sea ice of Antarctic is less affected by the impact of global warming than the Arctic sea ice is.
The Arctic was much more damaged by the effects of climate change, experiencing an outrageous decline during the whole 20th century. Specialists have estimated that the sea ice of Antarctic during summer has decreased by 14% compared to the early 1900s. The led author of the study, Jonathan Day, has argued that the missions of Antarctic explorers like Shackleton and Scott were recalled in the history as being heroic misfortunes.
However, all the information gathered by these explorers could only bring a significant contribution to the whole study, changing the view of the sea ice flow of Antarctic. During the last 30 years, there was registered a slight increase of the Antarctic sea ice. The new finding revealed by satellites did not bring any evidence concerning the effects of global warming, suggesting that there might not be any massive changes.
If the levels of the sea ice were registered to have the same rate of decrease a hundred years back, this must imply that a similar increase must have happened until the middle of the century. Data collected during that period has suggested that the levels of sea ice were higher compared to today. This new study is the only one which analyzes the sea ice from before the 1930s, proving that in the 1900s the sea ice levels was similar to those from today, measuring between 5.3 and 7.4 million square kilometers.
Image courtesy of: wikipedia
