Antarctica turning green due to climate change

It has been known through research that climate change is turning Antarctica green.

The researchers in the continent have found out increasing banks of mosses in the northern peninsula of Antarctica which indicates signs of climate change in the most cold and remote areas of Earth.

The scientists discovered two various species of mosses that were going through rapid growth. The mosses that grew less than one millimeter annually now grow more than three millimeters on average.

Matthew Amesbury, the lead author of the study which was published in Current Biology, said, “People will think of Antarctica quite rightly as a very icy place, but our work shows that parts of it are green, and are likely to be getting greener. Even these relatively remote ecosystems, that people might think are relatively untouched by human kind, are showing the effects of human induced climate change.”

Antarctic mosses grow on the frozen grounds of the peninsula which somewhat melts in summer. The mosses construct a thin coating in summers and freeze in the winter season. As one layer piles up on another, the older mosses sink underneath the frozen surface and are preserved because of the temperatures, Science Alert informed. According to Amesbury, this technique made the mosses “a record of changes over time”.

According to The Guardian, the co-author Matt Amesbury claimed, “Antarctica is not going to become entirely green, but it will become more green than it currently is.”

The soil samples from an area that is 400-mile long in the northern part of Antarctic Peninsula showed remarkable alterations in the growing patterns which date back to 150 years.

In the Antarctic Peninsula temperatures rise above freezing point which resulted in four to five-fold raise in moss growth quantity, according to the study.

Rob DeConto who reviewed the research stated, “This is another indicator that Antarctica is moving backward in geologic time - which makes sense, considering atmospheric CO2 levels have already risen to levels that the planet hasn't seen since the Pliocene, 3 million years ago, when the Antarctic ice sheet was smaller, and sea-levels were higher.”

He further continued, “If greenhouse gas emissions continue unchecked, Antarctica will head even further back in geologic time... perhaps the peninsula will even become forested again someday, like it was during the greenhouse climates of the Cretaceous and Eocene, when the continent was ice-free.”

The authors of the study are in agreement that these changes in the climate are most likely the beginning. They wrote, “These changes, combined with increased ice-free land areas from glacier retreat, will drive large-scale alteration to the biological functioning, appearance, and landscape of the [Antarctic peninsula] over the rest of the 21st century and beyond.”