The first time I went to Antarctica it was to the Argentinean Carlini Station (Potter Cove, Isla 25 de Mayo/King George Island), for my Master Thesis. I went there to study the macroalgal response to climate change such as temperature and light variation in the water column. Even though I was reading a lot about the impact of climate change on western Antarctica, I had no real idea about how much this place had changed during the past years. The eyes of people systematically going there to perform their research could know it, but not only. Satellite images gives us an idea of how much a place has changed in time, as in this image is quite evident the ice loss of the glacier Fourcade in Potter Cove, since 1956. Climate change has consequences that we could barely imagine and scientists are working hard to predict them. These include ecosystems, current dynamics and ocean chemistry changes and Polar regions are a location model as climate change is acting faster than in other Earth’s regions. We should all engage more to preserve our Planet. If not now, when?
Image credit: Quartino et al. 2013 – doi:https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0058223.g001.
Written by Valentina Savaglia
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