Earth and Climate Science
Dr Thamban Meloth
Group Director (Polar Sciences)
ESSO - National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research
Ministry of Earth Sciences (Government of India)
Vasco-da-Gama, Goa - 403 004
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Antarctica is a continent of extremes. The global warming and the associated processes are leading to large environmental changes in Antarctica. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) highlighted that the Antarctic contribution to the global sea-level rise has increased by a factor of five in the past two decades. This rapid increase in the overall mass deficit is mostly controlled by several retreating and thinning glaciers that lost buttressing forces from their shrinking ice shelves. Coastal regions in Antarctica are rapidly changing and largely control continent-wide contributions to the global sea level. Understanding the climate, mass balance and evolution of Antarctic ice sheets and ice shelves is thus crucial for a better understanding of the response of Antarctic ice sheets in a changing climate scenario and its contributions to the global sea-level changes. Antarctic ice cores offer an excellent natural archive that provide reliable proxy records of atmospheric circulation, temperature, precipitation and sea-ice condition that effectively extend beyond the instrumental records. Understanding the Antarctic climate variability on millennial, centennial to decadal level is crucial to our knowledge on the role and response of Antarctic ice sheets to the global climate variability.
