{"id":5681,"date":"2023-08-08T06:42:13","date_gmt":"2023-08-08T06:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latestnews.top\/2023\/08\/08\/antarctic-could-be-turning-from-the-planets-fridge-into-earths-radiator-scientists\/"},"modified":"2023-08-08T06:42:13","modified_gmt":"2023-08-08T06:42:13","slug":"antarctic-could-be-turning-from-the-planets-fridge-into-earths-radiator-scientists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latestnews.top\/antarctic-could-be-turning-from-the-planets-fridge-into-earths-radiator-scientists\/","title":{"rendered":"Antarctic could be turning from the planet’s fridge into Earth’s ‘radiator’, scientists"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Antarctic is turning from a fridge for the world – keeping temperatures down – to ‘a radiator’, scientists warned yesterday.<\/p>\n
Ice on land and sea in the Antarctic would normally reflect the sun’s rays back into space, but as water forms ponds and lakes on Antarctica, this absorbs heat.<\/p>\n
Professor Martin Siegert said the South Pole continent ‘is an enormous, vast white surface…it does an enormous job for the planet in terms of a lot of solar radiation bounced back into space’.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The same process – where ice has melted exposing the ocean – is already happening in the Arctic, he said.<\/p>\n
Professor Siegert, a glaciologist at the University of Exeter, said sea ice around the frozen continent is currently at its lowest level since satellites began observing it in 1979, beating the previous minimum record set last year.<\/p>\n