Antarctica contains more than half of the world's freshwater in its sprawling, frozen ice sheet, but humanity's decisions over the next century could send that water irreversibly into the sea.
If global warming is allowed to continue unchecked, Antarctica will soon pass a "point of no return" that could reduce the continent to a barren, ice-free mass for the first time in more than 30 million years, according to a new study published Sep. 23 in the journal Nature.
"Antarctica is basically our ultimate heritage from an earlier time in Earth's history. It's been around for roughly 34 million years," study co-author Anders Levermann, a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany, said in a statement. "Now our simulations show that once it's melted, it does not regrow to its initial state [until] temperatures go back to pre-industrial levels … a highly unlikely scenario. In other words: What we lose of Antarctica now, is lost forever."
