La Antarctica. An icy continent, with a magnificent white landscape, as the planet warms its ice melts. The albedo effect is like this: the sun's rays hit the snow, which, when absorbed, loses its solidity until it ends up being dissolved by the sea.
For this reason, the poles are the regions most vulnerable to climate change. In the case of Antarctica, the temperature could rise up to 6 degrees by the end of the century.
Image - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
After the last ice age, 20.000 years ago, Antarctica warmed two to three times the average global temperature riseAccording to a study published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, to the point that it registered an unusual temperature: 11 degrees Celsius, when the normal thing is that it is several degrees below zero. In the rest of the planet, it only increased about 4 degrees Celsius.
The scientists used global climate models that were used to analyze Earth's climate 20.000 years ago, which is the same as those used to predict global warming in the futuresaid Kurt Cuffey, first author of the study and a glaciologist at the University of California, Berkeley.
Thus, they can predict that due to current climate change Antarctica will get twice as hot as the rest of the planet; In other words, in the event that the global average temperature rises 3 degrees Celsius, which according to the models is the most likely to happen, Antarctica will warm around 6ºC.
In other words, if we do nothing to stop global warming, the consequences for Antarctica and the world could pose a huge challenge for all of us who live on this planet.
You can read the study here (It is in English).