Station Bernardo O'Higgins,Antarctica
A dazzling sight of blinding ice runs forever along this extreme northern part of Antarctica,hiding an unseen battle below that fights to reshape Earth.
Ice sheets are slowly thawing as water eats away at their core,eroding them where they graze the oceans. Slowly thawing ice is pouring water into the sea,at 130 billions tons of ice per year for the past decade,NASA satellite calculations reveal. This is enough to fill more than 1.3 million Olympic swimming pools,and the rate of thawing is only accelerating.
Ice melt in the region could push sea levels up 10 feet in the worst-case scenario,causing recurving of heavily populated coastlines worldwide in a century or two.
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At its current rate,the rise from Antarctica would only lift the world's oceans a barely noticeable one-third of a millimeter a year.
But if the entire West Antarctic ice sheet that's connected to water melts unstoppably,as several experts predict,there won't be time to prepare. Scientists estimate it will take from 200 to 1,000 years to melt enough ice to raise seas by 10 feet,maybe only 100 years in a worst-case scenario.
For a dozen days in January,in the middle of the chilly Antarctic summer,The Associated Press followed scientists from different fields searching for alien-like creatures,hints of pollution trapped in ancient ice,leftovers from the Big Bang,biological quirks that potentially could lead to better medical treatments,and perhaps most of all,signs of unstoppable melting.
A zodiac boat carried a team of international scientists to Chile's station Bernardo O'Higgins,and a group of penguins stood on a rock near the mission. Scientists collected samples on Deception Island,and elsewhere in Antarctica during the visit.
Some of the images from the trip are above.
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