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Feeling the heat, missing snow, want to go skiing? Try out this interactive Antarctica simulation build with flash 3d.

via: Ehrensenf

The Arctic sea ice conditions are now very similar to last year. The maritime shortcuts through the Artic Sea are almost open or already open. The total extent two days before - the NSDIC reported yesterday - was 5.47 million square kilometers.

Buoys indicate surface melting is coming to an end while bottom melting of the ice will continue a few more weeks.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Madam Ban Soon-taek visited Chile and Antarctica last week (8-11 November). As first Secretary-General he walked on the frozen continent and inspected Collins Glacier on King George’s Island.

I am here today to observe the impact of global warming. To see for myself and learn all I can. We joke among ourselves that we are on an ‘Eco-tour’, but I am not here as a tourist but as a messenger of early warning.

What we saw today was extraordinarily beautiful. These dramatic landscapes are rare and wonderful, but it is deeply disturbing as well. We can clearly see this world changing. The ice is melting far faster than we think.

All this may be gone, and not in the distant future, unless we act, together, now

Look about us. We have seen it with our own eyes. Antarctica is on the verge of a catastrophe - for the world. The glaciers here on King George Island have shrunk by 10 per cent. Some in Admiralty Bay have retreated by 25 kilometres. You know how the Larsen B ice sheet collapsed several years ago and disappeared within weeks - the size of Rhode Island, 87 kilometres.

What alarms me is not the melting snow and glaciers, alone. It is that the Larsen phenomenon could repeat itself on a vastly greater scale. Scientists here have told me that the entire Western Antarctic Ice Shelf - the WAIS - is at risk. It is all floating ice, one fifth of the entire continent. If it broke up, sea levels could rise by 6 metres or 18 feet. Think of that. And it could happen quickly, almost overnight in geological terms.

This is not scare-mongering. I am not trying to frighten you. According to recent studies, 138 tons of ice are now being lost every year, mostly from the Western Ice Shelf.

You know, also that deep blue water absorbs more heat than sea covered with ice. The sea ice around Antarctica is vanishing too.

There are other deeply worrying signs. The penguin population of Chabrier Rock, a main breeding ground, has declined by 57 per cent in the last 25 years. It is the same elsewhere. What will happen to the annual march of the penguins in the future? Will there even be one?

Grass is growing for the first time ever here on King George Island - including a grass used on American golf courses. It rains, increasingly often in the summer rather than snows.

These things should alarm us all. Antarctica is a natural lab that helps us understand what is happening to our world. We must save this precious earth, including all that is here. It is a natural wonder, but above all, it is our common home.

It is here where our work, together, comes into focus. We see Antarctica’s beauty - and the danger global warming represents, and the urgency that we do something about it. I am determined that we shall.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s statement on Antarctica on 9 November

Picture Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

Under present climate conditions, 609 out of the 666 (or 91%) Alpine ski areas in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland can be considered as naturally snow-reliable.

The remaining 9% are already operating under marginal conditions. The number of naturally snow-reliable areas would drop to 500 under 1

Ice shelves are much thicker than sea based ice like the Arctic ice shield. The thickness of modern-day ice shelves ranges from about 100 to 1000 meters. They consist of former land based ice up to thousands years old floating on the oceans now but still connected to continents.

When shelves melt they do not contribute to sea level rising. On the other hand they held back land ice and control the pouring rate. Land ice going off the continent causes rising sea level.

Most ice shelves are found in Antarctic, the biggest the Ross Ice Shelf is as big as France or in Greenland. Canadian ice shelves are attached to Ellesmere Island. (more…)

WMO reports cancelled sports events in Austria, Czech Republic, France, Slovakia and Switzerland caused by warm weather in these countries. With temperatures above 10°C and heavy rain even artificial snow is not an option.

Picture above shows the Alps last and this (right) year by December 1st.

Yahoo! News: 2006-07 World Cup Ski Schedule

Die Zeit: Der Schneekanonier, der Pistenraupenfahrer, der Lawinensprenger

Glaciers melt faster than scientists can save their instruments.

BBC News feature broadcasted 21-11-06