Polar researchers have issued an emergency statement calling for urgent action to deal with the impacts of climate change in Antarctica. The statement was drafted after hundreds of scientists gathered in Hobart to discuss unprecedented changes taking place in the frozen continent.
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00:00From record low levels of sea ice to heat waves 40 degrees above average, Antarctica
00:09has been undergoing rapid and extreme change in recent years.
00:13We throw around the word unprecedented quite a lot in climate science, but it really is
00:18true.
00:19We have seen shifts in the sea ice that were beyond our wildest imaginations.
00:23Over the past week, more than 450 polar researchers have gathered in Hobart for the first conference
00:30of its kind in Australia in more than a decade.
00:33I think one of the clear things from this conference was that we are approaching some
00:37tipping points that we're not sure whether we can reverse or not.
00:41Around two-thirds of attendees are early career researchers who've issued a statement warning
00:47of an impending crisis if urgent action isn't taken, saying runaway ice loss causing rapid
00:54and catastrophic sea level rise is possible within our lifetimes.
00:58Our societies must set and meet targets to bend the carbon curve as quickly as possible.
01:06Although there's lots of tipping points that we don't necessarily understand completely,
01:10we do know enough to say that we do need to protect, we do need to control our emissions.
01:19Global sea levels have risen 10 centimetres in the past 30 years, but scientists are increasingly
01:25concerned about the Antarctic ice sheet, which holds enough water to raise sea levels
01:30by about 50 metres if it completely melted.
01:35Scientists say research in the polar region needs to be prioritised to ensure we have
01:40a clear picture of the speed and severity of potential changes in store.
01:46So more funding into those areas is pretty crucial to understand how it's going to affect
01:50our planet.
01:51A call to arms from the next generation of Antarctic researchers.