Scientist has reported that glaciers at Antarctica a melting at an alarming rates. It has been observed that “Pine Island”, a gigantic glacier in West Antarctica is melting at four times higher rate that it was 10 years ago. This glacier is around twice the size of Scotland.
Glaciers at Antarctica Region
According to a recent research, published in “Geophysical Research Letters” journal, it has been estimated that at this rate the main section of glaciers will disappear in 100 years. This is six time sooner than it was estimated previously.
This research was led by Professor Duncan Wingham at University College London, and was funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council.
Pine Island:
Pine Island is one of the main glacier that is located the most inaccessible region of Antarctic. It is nearly 1000 km from the research base. This island was unnoticed for many years, but now scientists have tracked the development of glacier in past 15 years using satellite measurements.
According to Professor Andrew Shepherd of School of Earth and Environment at Leeds University, this accelerated thinning of Pine Island shows the increasing imbalance in Cyrosphere. It may remain unobserved in absence of satellite instruments. He is a co-author of research paper.
Scientist has collected a record of past 15 years, which helped them to identify the subtle and dramatic change that was hidden previously.
Role of Global Warming:
Scientist says that the retreat of glaciers in this region of Antarctica is caused by warming of surrounding oceans, but it’s too early to relate this to global warming. Some experts say that warming of Antarctic sea is a major reason to this.
Impact on Environment:
The area of Pine Island is around 5,400 km square is big enough to increase the rate at which sea level is rising around the world.
Professor Shepherd says:
“Because the Pine Island Glacier contains enough ice to almost double the IPCC’s best estimate of 21st century sea level rise, the manner in which the glacier will respond to the accelerated thinning is a matter of great concern.”
Scientist has discovered more than 350 new species in eastern Himalayas. These species includes world’s smallest deer, a flying frog and a 100 million old gecko. But the existence of these species is now threatened due to the climate change.
Scientist after researching for more than 10 years in remote areas of eastern mountains has found these amazing discoveries. These areas are endangered by global warming effects.
Some of the Amazing Creatures:
Some of the cool creatures like bright green frog that uses its red and long webbed feet to glide in air are now at the edge of extinction due to the changing temperature of that area.
The Flying Frog
They have also found “leaf deer,” which is the world’s oldest and smallest deer species with 60-80 centimeters in height. Initially it was believed that it was juvenile of another species, but DNA tests confirmed that it is a new species.
The Leef Deer
A new species of Caecilian, a limbless amphibian has also been found that resembles giant earthworm and lives underground.
One of the most important finding of this research is a 100-million old gecko which is the oldest fossil gecko species ever discovered in history.
There are 244 plants, 16 amphibians, 16 reptiles, 14 fish, 2 birds, 2 mammals and at least 60 new invertebrates have been discovered. These all discoveries have been compiled in WWF report which is a collection of all these discoveries from leading scientist from different organizations.
“The Eastern Himalayas — Where Worlds Collide”
“The Eastern Himalayas — Where Worlds Collide,” is the WWF report which covers all details of discoveries made by scientist during the period of 1998 to 2008.
The region of this all research was from Bhutan and North-East India to far north of Myanmar as well as Nepal and southern parts of Tibet Autonomous Region (China) so it spanned five countries Nepal, China, India, Bhutan and Myanmar.
According to Jon Miceler, Director of WWF’s Eastern Himalayans Program:
“The good news of this explosion in species discoveries is tempered by the increasing threats to the Himalayas’ cultural and biological diversity. This rugged and remarkable landscape is already seeing direct, measurable impacts from climate change and risks being lost forever.”
The Eastern Himalaya:
The Eastern Himalayan region is house of 10,000 plant species, 300 mammal species, 977 bird species, 176 reptiles, 105 amphibians and 269 types of freshwater fish.
This region has highest density of Bengal Tigers in world and one-horned Rhino is found only here. Some other endangered species of this region are Asian Elephants, Red Pandas, Golden Langurs, Gangetic Dolphins etc.
A large region of Eastern Himalayan is still unexplored and poorly surveyed due to extremely difficult biological nature of this area.
