Hundreds of polar researchers have issued an emergency statement titled “Making Antarctica Cool Again”, calling for urgent action to deal with the impacts of climate change in Antarctica.

More than 450 researchers gathered in Hobart for the inaugural Australian Antarctic Research Conference, the first such event in more than a decade.     The conference highlighted the richness of cross-institutional and cross-disciplinary collaborations, with almost two thirds of attendees being early career researchers.

One significant output from the conference was the decision to issue a joint emergency statement, titled “Making Antarctica Cool Again”, calling for urgent action to prevent catastrophic sea level rise around the world. Providing a pertinent example for the conference’s host country, the statement read “Nowhere on Earth is there a greater cause of uncertainty in sea level rise projections than from East Antarctica, in Australia’s backyard”.

Why the urgency?

Based on research by the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership (AAPP), the continent is currently estimated to lose 17 million tonnes of ice every hour, and  global sea levels have risen by about 10 centimetres over the last 30 years. Long-term polar researchers praised the urgency expressed in the statement, saying these dramatic shifts in the sea ice exceeded their wildest imaginations, which are now seeing heat waves that were 40 degrees warmer than expected weather and entire colonies of Emperor penguins losing all of their young in a breeding season.

Researchers say “The Southern Ocean and Antarctica — oceanic carbon sink and planetary air-conditioner — have been taken for granted… societies must set and meet targets to ‘bend the carbon curve’ as quickly as possible.”