Canary in the Coal Mine? Why Antarctica’s Warming Demands Our Attention

As anyone in the U.S. experiencing the current heat wave can attest, it’s getting a little warm in here. Trends suggest 2023 will be the hottest year on record and it’s safe to say, climate change is not just an abstract thing that might happen in the future but a very real problem in the present days.

And sadly, a region halfway around the world is undergoing alarming changes that will have profound consequences for the entire world.

Antarctica, not a top of mind tourist destination, but critically important as Earth’s largest refrigerator, is thawing, in recent years undergoing massive changes on land, in the surrounding ocean and atmosphere, signaling what glaciologists are calling a “regime shift” as glaciers slide toward the seas. This is alarming because initially, scientists thought the rapidly melting Arctic was the canary in the coal mine and Antarctica, which stores the largest reserve of fresh water globally in the form of ice sheets covering 98% of the continent, looked stable.

However, no place on Earth is immune to the impacts of climate change.

Antarctica has begun warming at twice the global average, signaling it is becoming a driver of global warming rather than a buffer. As the ice sheets in Antarctica melt, sea levels will rise…