Hyperwarming

Studies suggest that long-term climate models up to the year 2300 are missing key positive feedbacks that could send global temperatures towards levels high enough to melt the ice, if not over the entire Gamburtsevs, then at least large parts of even Antarctica for the first time in over 30 million years:

In particular, the release of methane from melting Arctic permafrost has not yet been factored in. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, but remains in the atmosphere for only 10 years on average before it reacts with hydroxyl radicals in the air to form CO2. However, a large release of methane from melting permafrost could swamp the hydroxyl supply, allowing the methane to linger in the atmosphere for 15 years or more, further amplifying the warming. 

Some feedbacks never before considered might also come into play... In the future oceans may store less carbon. Normally some atmospheric carbon is lost at sea, buried in the carcasses of tiny marine animals. But sediment from the Eocene contains little carbon, suggesting that this process failed during the last hothouse...

Reversing this?

Cold comfort

Around 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, about 90 per cent of land species were wiped out as global temperatures soared. A cat-sized distant relative of mammals, Kombuisia antarctica, seems to have survived the extinction by fleeing south to Antarctica.

-- finds a study by Jörg Fröbisch et al. This provides valuable evidence that animals today could survive climate change by migrating, Peter Mayhew tells New Scientist. But today, says David Jablonski, humans have so thoroughly fragmented much of the land surface with cities, suburbs, farmland and highways that many species cannot make the necessary range shifts.

There are other factors too. Most obviously, Antarctica is further south than it was 250 million years ago and no longer joined to other land masses.

In 2007 Stephen Pyne described Antarctica as an analogue for space, so barren of life is its great centre.


Still, if climatic change proves to be very large -- with for example, a rise of more than 4 or 6 C in global average temperature, and rises far greater than that at the poles -- Antarctic ecology will change beyond recognition. The continent's present fauna will be devastated. Some plant and animal species will arrive from the north will-he nill-he, but others could be deliberately transplanted, and a rapidly emerging set of new ecosystems protected and managed, to a limited extent, by people who somehow succeed in keeping the human urge to extract and despoil every last resource under control. The Gamburtsevs could teem with life (an idée fixe on this blog).

Much of the rest of the world may be blasted and wrecked. But fragments of the song of songs would continue in full voice in what had been the deadest place on the planet.

Antarctic Highlands, 3009 AD?

For science rather than wild speculation see SCAR's report on Antarctic Climate Change and the Environment.

P.S. 18 Dec: Data to expose 'ghost mountains'

A new place for life

There's been a lot of climate change over the last 14 million years, and what we can say about this place in the middle of the Antarctic is that nothing has changed.

But if levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide continue to rise, in around 1,000 years they will approach the same levels that existed before there was persistent ice sheet in Antarctica.

-- Martin Siegert, University of Edinburgh (BBC)

A place for life

This blog has speculated on the Gamburtsevs as a place for future life. It is now reported that liquid water flows in their valleys. Perhaps this already allows strange microbes life to flourish.


P.S. Environment ministers huddle.

Remembered hills

At 500 million years old, [the Gamburtsevs] may not be the oldest mountains on the planet, but they likely are the tallest of the ancient mountains still in existence.

-- notes Matt Kaplan with reference to work by Tina Van de Flierdt et al.

An earlier post asked if life might come back to the Gamburtsevs in a warmer world. At the time, I was not aware of research pointing to their age. But if they really are about 500 million years old, then it seems almost certain that they have been inhabited by organisms larger than microbes before now.

Unlocked

Scientists are exploring the Gamburtsevs -- 'ghost' mountains of undetermined age that have been buried far beneath the Antarctic ice for perhaps 15 million years [1].

55.8 million years ago, at the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum (PETM), the average annual temperature at both poles was 10 to 20 °C. The Arctic ocean warmed to over 22°C in summer. Antarctica was not only ice-free but warm.

Atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are probably faster at present than a any time since the PETM. Unlike 56 million years ago, however, Antarctica is separated from other continents, and this (as well as other significant differences) means the consequences of today's rise are unlikely to play out the same way. So how will Antarctica change this time? How many existing life forms will be eliminated? What will replace them? Could life come to the Gamburtsevs, and would it be for the first time since they came into existence?

P.S. From the other end of the planet, dramatic footage of Sermeq Kujalleq, the world's fastest glacier. (And, 17 Oct: Arctic air temperatures hit record highs)

Footnote:

[1] See Paradise Lost, Book II:

Far off from these, a slow and silent stream,
Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls
Her watery labyrinth, whereof who drinks
Forthwith his former state and being forgets--
Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.
Beyond this flood a frozen continent
Lies dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms
Of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm land
Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems
Of ancient pile; all else deep snow and ice