Scientists, Officials probe Antarctic Climate risks

By Charles J. Hanley • Associated Press •

Troll Research Station, Antarctica -- A parka-clad band of environment ministers landed in this remote corner of the icy continent on Monday, in the final days of an intense season of climate research, to learn more about how a melting Antarctica may endanger the planet.

Representatives from more than a dozen nations, including the United States, China, Britain and Russia, were to rendezvous at a Norwegian research station with U.S. and Norwegian scientists ending a 1,400-mile, 2-month trek over the ice from the South Pole.The visitors are to gain "hands-on experience of the colossal magnitude of the Antarctic continent and its role in global climate change," said the mission's organizer, Norway's Environment Ministry.

They'll also learn about the great uncertainties plaguing research into this southernmost continent and its link to global warming. How much is Antarctica warming? How much ice is melting into the sea? How high might it raise ocean levels worldwide?

The answers are so elusive that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a Nobel Prize-winning United Nations scientific network, excluded the potential threat from the polar ice sheets from calculations in a 2007 assessment of global warming.Finding the answers has been key to the 2007-2009 International Polar Year, a mobilization of 10,000 scientists and 40,000 others from more than 60 countries.

Outspoken scientists say political action may be even more urgently needed."We are out of our cotton-pickin' minds if we let that process get started," NASA's James Hansen, a leading U.S. climatologist, said of an Antarctic meltdown. "Because there will be no stopping it."

[Source:http://www.freep.com, February 24, 2009]