Unexpected ice
Charles Rotter
From NASA
Unexpected ice header
by Natasha Vizcarra
On the prowl for food, Adelie penguins scan the ice ceiling. They peck at silverfish and hunt for polynyas, gaping holes in the sea ice where shoals of krill and bug-like copepods graze on clouds of algae. When spring comes, the huge plates of sea ice start to melt and later in the brief Antarctic summer all but disappear. Then, algae blooms unfurl: a bacchanalian feast for krill and critters all the way up the Antarctic food chain. Sea ice, sunlight, and food—they all come and go with the seasons in the Southern Ocean.
Paul Holland, a climate modeler with the British Antarctic Survey, has spent the last ten years studying Antarctica’s sea ice and the Southern Ocean. Lately, he has been scrutinizing the seasons of Antarctica and how fast the ice comes and goes. Holland thinks these seasons may be a key to a conundrum: If Earth’s temperatures are getting warmer and sea ice in the Arctic has been shrinking fast, why then is sea ice in the Antarctic slowly increasing?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/02/01/unexpected-ice/
