Sea ice levels in Antarctica have reached record lows for three consecutive years, signaling serious consequences for life on Earth as we know it. But scientist Miguel Ángel de Pablo, who looks at the southernmost continent, complains that humanity heeded the warnings.

“We (scientists) are very worried… because we don’t see how we can solve this on our own,” a Spanish planetary geologist based on Livingstone Island in the South Shetland Antarctic archipelago told AFP.

Despite the evidence, he said, “The more warnings we send out to make the public aware of what’s going on, it seems like we’re not being listened to, we’re perceived as alarmists.”

The minimum sea ice extent in Antarctica was less than two million square kilometers (772,000 square miles) for the third consecutive February, the peak of the southern summer melt season, the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said on Wednesday. .

The minimum sea ice extent in all three years was the lowest since records began 46 years ago. Melting sea ice does not have an immediate impact on ocean levels because it is caused by the freezing of salt water already in the ocean. But white ice reflects more sunlight than dark ocean water, and its loss exposes freshwater ice sheets on land while exacerbating global warming; These ice sheets could cause catastrophic sea level rise if they melted.

“Even though we are far from any inhabited part of the planet, what happens in Antarctica actually affects everything in the rest of the world,” de Pablo said.

“It’s not easy to take it back”

A study last year found that nearly half of Antarctica’s ice shelves (floating sheets attached to land) have also shrunk in volume over the past 25 years, releasing trillions of tonnes of meltwater into the oceans. This affects not only sea level but also ocean salinity and temperature, De Pablo said.

Some scientists say the evidence for the impact of climate change on melting sea ice in Antarctica, known for large annual fluctuations in summer thaws and winter freezes, is less clear than in the Arctic Arctic. There is no doubt that global warming from human greenhouse gas emissions will affect these patterns in the future. De Pablo, who has devoted 16 years of his life to studying Antarctic ice, told AFP it may be too late to stop the trend.

“The problem is that these distortions are not easy to fix,” he said.

“Even if we change the rhythms of life in Western societies today, tomorrow the glaciers will not stop degrading and the permafrost will not disappear.”

According to scientists, global temperatures are currently 1.2 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial levels. The 2015 Paris Agreement called for limiting warming to 1.5C (2.7F) by limiting emissions that warm the planet.

“We have to ask ourselves whether the way we live our daily lives is really worth it, because eventually we will lose our planet,” De Pablo said.

“There is no second planet Earth,” he added.